© Matthew Hengst via APIn this Aug. 14, 2015, photo provided by Matthew Hengst, bugs swarm at a service station in the eastern Sierra Nevada town of Lone Pine, Calif.
The gas station's ground was covered with the small winged bugs. Piles of carcasses, inches deep, sat swept to the sides.
On the road, they rained onto car windshields. They flew by the thousands toward even the smallest sources of light, and crept along windows and kitchen tables.
Such has been the skin-crawling reality for the past two months in the high-desert communities at the foot of the Sierra Nevada's eastern slopes, where residents have seen an explosion of the black-and-red seed bug species Melacoryphus lateralis.
"They're in everything. There's no way to get rid of them or eradicate them. They're just here," said Blair Nicodemus, 33, of Lone Pine, while driving with a bug creeping on his windshield. "Sometimes there will be these micro-plumes that'll come through where there will be just thousands of them, and they'll be all over you. ... I'm sure I've eaten at least two dozen, because they get into your food."
Such outbreaks have happened in Arizona's Sonoran desert near Tucson, but scientists say it's the first one in recent memory in California.
The influx has been driven by a mild winter and monsoonal weather, which provided healthier vegetation for the nutrient-sucking bugs, said David Haviland, an entomologist with the University of California Cooperative Extension in Kern County.
The bugs' flight into town and toward the lights in homes, businesses or cars, however, might be related to the drying up of native vegetation in the summer heat and the drought, said Nathan Reade, agricultural commissioner for Inyo and Mono counties.
The fingernail-sized insects are the main topic of conversation in the area.
© Matthew Hengst via APIn this Aug. 14, 2015 photo provided by Matthew Hengst, bugs swarm at a service station in the eastern Sierra Nevada town of Lone Pine, Calif. Scientists are calling the unusual explosion of this Melacoryphus lateralis species of seed bug the first outbreak of its kind in California{2019}s recent memory.
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