Plant Lice…Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I recently asked on facebook what the heck these nasty, miniscule you’ve got to be kidding flying dense clouds of insects are in my neighborhood.  They came out of nowhere and they really upset me when I am out walking my dog. I have them up my nose, in my ears, totally in my hair …they even stuck to my lips after I had put lip balm on. Gross!  Thanks to my neighbor and a link to a local article in the paper the mystery is solved.

Due to a cold wet summer we have a prolific crop of aphids or plant lice.  They do not bite.   Good to know.  They are currently in ritual and leaping from their homes in plants to their winter homes in trees. Often they do this in swarms.

It’s apparently the 11th coldest summer in Illinois history 

I wish they would hurry and find their trees already.

I feel itchy just writing about it.

The picture below somehow makes an aphid beautiful. I’ll have to try and remember that when I walk into the swarms of them outside.


flickr aphid image

This entry was written by Karen Hanrahan, posted on September 22, 2009 at 12:18 am, filed under Random and tagged . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

2 Comments

  1. julie
    Posted September 22, 2009 at 11:15 pm | Permalink

    boy if you feel itchy with plant lice, i had head lice this weekend that was terrible! got them from my niece @#Z$!%!, but i love her so it just was great see her, so i found your comments while on my mission to learn all about all types of lice.thanks for the fyi

  2. Karen Hanrahan
    Posted September 22, 2009 at 11:28 pm | Permalink

    julie — we dealt with head lice when my kids were little — VERY itchy. Too funny that your search had you find me here, come visit again anytime

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