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They’re coming, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop them.

Any day now they will emerge, beast-like, from their hidden lairs in the ground. Their slim, black bodies will dot the spring skies, and they’ll commence the most public orgy since the Roman Empire: the ritual mating dance of plecia nearctica Hardy, aka the lovebug—also known as the march fly, the honeymoon fly or the telephone bug.

The invasion is expected in May.

Cars soon will be festooned with lovebug innards, and drivers will grumble about the mess.

But next to termites, fire ants and mosquitoes, are lovebugs really so bad?

They don’t sting or bite. They don’t spread disease. They don’t eat your house.

They’re too busy locked in airborne, coital clutches to mess with us humans.

The lucky ones will complete their zigzagging dance to ensure the next generation will emerge come September. But the others won’t be so lucky. They will wind up smeared on radiator grills and windshields. The baking sun will etch little pits in the paint, marking the unlucky ones’ ecstatic demise until the next visit to Benny’s Car Wash.

So what’s the deal with lovebugs? We all deal with them, but know so little about them. Consider lovebug school in session. As someone whose friends will dutifully report I can be a bit too obsessed with insects, I feel it is my duty to share lovebug information.

We know lovebug season corresponds perfectly with the school year. They emerge in May, just as schools disgorge themselves of children for the summer. And in September, the lovebugs return about the time school resumes.

A researcher named D.E. Handy of Galveston, Texas, is credited with first observing the little buggers in 1940. At that time, they were prominent only in Louisiana and Texas. But like the fire ant, which arrived in the States at roughly the same time as Hardy’s studies, lovebugs have spread to every state on the Gulf Coast.

You’re welcome, Alabama. Of course, it’s only fair we give them lovebugs—it is believed fire ants first snuck into North America in the holds of South American ships docked in Mobile.

Reading about lovebugs you learn interesting insights into the sexes, some of which resonates with us humans, some of which seems alien.

Lovebug females, it turns out, are about twice the weight of the males. That’s because ovaries represent most of females’ total body weight. I >> wonder if they ask their male partners, “Hey honey, do I look fat to you?”

According to entomologists, lovebugs instinctively start flying when temperatures reach 82.4 degrees and the spring sun’s brightness reaches a level measured as 20,000 lux.

Huh? What a bunch of bologna. Lovebugs fly when they see cars coming. They flock to highways, making tiny suicide pacts as they dash in pairs to Splatsville.

“Come on, sweetie. It’ll never get better than this! Look, it’s a BMW! Weeee!”

Splat.

So now you’re wondering, what’s the deal with the bug fixation. It began 15 years ago when I wrote a newspaper story about lovebugs for The Courier in Houma. I phoned LSU entomologist Dale Pollet to get to the bottom of lovebug lore. I wanted to know everything I could learn about the little insects that were clouding Terrebonne Parish’s skies and staining truck grills. In about 10 minutes on the phone, he taught me plenty.

I remember Pollet telling me lovebugs live in larval form in the ground and they emerge in spring and fall as adults to mate.

I wasn’t surprised to learn it’s the female who flies forwards while the male flaps happily backwards in the wind behind her.

I asked if they are monogamous. He wasn’t sure.

I asked how long their mating lasts. It varied, he said.

I asked him why they ruin car paint. He said their guts are acidic.

But I pressed my inquiries further. I ventured into the world of actual research.

A mating pair landed on the windshield of my Mazda at a red light, prompting me to wonder how long they could hold on and at what speed they’d go hurtling off into my rear view mirror. The light changed, and I sped up gradually. If memory serves, the female kept her grip, with the male flapping helplessly against the glass, until 32 mph.

Today, information about lovebugs is a little easier to come by. The Internet was not widely available back then. Now, university Web sites offer everything you ever wanted to know about lovebugs and then some. One particularly informative site is the University of Florida’s.

It’s a war up there among the lovebug males, and both male and female adult lives revolve around mating. The males grasp females in mid-flight and then drop to the ground to get things going. Competition for females is intense, and males try and disrupt mating pairs. Mating pairs remain connected for days at a time.

Females lay their eggs after mating and die soon afterward. (Interestingly, females that mate twice live a little longer.)

It is widely known lovebugs can ruin your car’s paint. But it turns out their guts are only slightly acidic, so if you rinse them off quickly there’s no damage. It’s only after a few days baking in the sun bacteria sets in to their decaying bodies, and that’s what damages paint.

Pollet, who is still a professor and LSU’s extension service, says we haven’t learned that much about lovebugs in recent years. They aren’t really a big deal.

In fact, if the dry weather continues, this May’s lovebug swarms may not be so thick.

Maybe next spring, I’ll be researching and writing about tumbleweeds.