Wash Wipe

The opening sequence to the first Men in Black movie acts out a very familiar sequence of events from my childhood. 

That has got you pondering whether I am a border insurgent, a member a top secret government organisation with a mandate to save the world from aliens or an actual alien from another galaxy or time. 

It is a simpler and much less elaborate a story than that. 

If you recall, the film starts with a large dragonfly flitting around in the dusk in a New Mexico or Texas desert landscape. 

Seemingly carefree and enjoying the aura of a full moon the belligerent fly drifts towards a highway and dodges a juggernaut and other vehicles before being splattered on the windscreen of a van at about 02.58 minutes in. 

Yes, I am referring to the common phenomena in my childhood years of witnessing the slaughter and carnage of insects on the windscreen and bonnet of the family car on a typical drive to summer vacation or on an evening excursion. 

My Father would have to keep the screen-wash topped up, super strength, to try to rinse off the blood and tissue that, moments before impact belonged to a selection of God’s creatures minding their own business. 

In those days of inferior bodywork and paints on, in particular the succession of Volkswagen's that my father preferred, the constant bombardment of guts and tendons was responsible for rampant corrosion through to bare metal and the slow deterioration of roadworthiness and residual values. 

There were five of us children and invariably, after a long journey visiting Grandparents or places of interest, we would find the motion of the car and that distinctive background sound of an air cooled VW engine most soporific. 

However, the sudden, unannounced and violent thud of the skeletal frame of a bug on the windscreen would be enough to waken us in a confused and disturbed state. 

Gradually over the last few decades and so as not to be readily noticeable to drivers and nervous passengers there has been a significant decline in the numbers of insects. This dropping off in population has now reached such a troubling extent that motorists are only now realising that their windscreens are clear of squashed flies, gnats, moths and wasps. 

Some may have given this a bit of thought and attributed it to highly efficient windscreen glass, almost of self cleaning characteristics or the next generation of wipers with extra grip and debris scraping ability. It has also been suggested that cars have changed shape over time and ,being now far more aerodynamic, fewer insects are hit.

In fact we should be very concerned as to where all of the insects have gone. 

Could it be down to agricultural insecticides, climate change, habitat loss or, menacingly, a change in the appetites and tastes of the predators of insects such as spiders, birds and other creatures higher up in the food chain. 

We may prefer to have sparklingly clean windscreens and rust free car bodywork but there are deeper and worrying reasons that Entymologists are now studying intently.

An amateur Germany based organisation has been monitoring insect numbers at 100 nature reserves in Western Europe since the 1980s. Although there were the usual seasonal fluctuations in most years they discovered that from 2013 numbers began to plummet by nearly 80 per cent. What is termed ‘aerial biomass’ - or flying insects - has fallen significantly since the 1970s. Monitoring sites around Britain have failed to capture declines, although the experts believe recording may have started too late to capture the impact of increased agricultural intensification.

Since 2006, beekeepers in Britain have lost about a third of their managed bee colonies each year largely due to the loss of flower-rich grassland which has declined by 97 per cent from the 1930s, and the increased use of chemicals on crops.

Experts have expressed their concerns that this is part of the wholesale loss of small animals in recent decades.  The public know about bees and butterflies, but these are just the tip of the iceberg.  Moths, hoverflies, wasps, beetles and many other groups are now sparse where once they were abundant.

Whilst they had found evidence that the number of flying insects is falling the anecdotal observations by the public of the windscreen phenomenon is difficult to prove.

What about reports from other organisations?

The charity, Butterfly Conservation has documented a fall of insects by 40 per cent in the South of England over the past 40 years.

In Canada a project calculated that hundreds of billions of pollinating insects were probably being killed as a consequence of the increase in roadgoing vehicles on a year on year basis in North America.

Research in the UK found that a large number of stag beetles are killed by road traffic each year in Britain, with three times as many females killed as males with obvious implications for breeding and population numbers.

A recent report from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) which brings together findings from 50 organisations, suggests there has been a 59 per cent decline in insects in the UK since 1970.

In 2004, in a unique and practical piece of research, the RSPB asked motorists to attach a piece of PVC film to their vehicles to collect insects, to see if they were declining. They recorded 324,814 ‘splats’, an average of only one squashed insect every five miles.

The survey, although ingenious was only carried out once so it was impossible to see whether bug numbers had fallen over time.

The blood and other bodily residues amassed as collateral damage on what was meant to be a pleasurable motoring journey in my childhood have made a strong impression on me. 

In my developing and adult years I have endeavoured to, where practical and safe, revive and rescue insects in distress or incapacity and I put this down to the traumatic experiences all of those years ago. 

Spiders are lifted out of bathtubs wherever I come across them, bluebottles are directed carefully to a newly opened window, wasps (those panic inducing little rascals) are playfully swotted away until they get the message and moths often find themselves tenderly cupped in an airpocket of my cushioned hands before being released into the outdoor environment.  

In closing, I must recount one of my favourite jokes of all time. 

“What is the last thing that passes through the mind of a fly as it hits a windscreen?"

The answer is available, upon request, through the comments section below if you really want to know.

Source; Science, The Daily Telegraph article