There you are, driving along the interstate highway or a lonely back road. Your thoughts are of what’s for supper or seeing your significant other, or perhaps, just looking forward to relaxing after a day’s work. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you are thinking when it happens. But it does happen.
Suddenly, KERSPLATTTT! At first, the suddenness and noise makes you question whether it was a rock or a bullet that hit your windshield. Once you realize you are not hurt and the windshield is still intact, you understand it was neither. However and from the goo and gunk on the windshield, you might question whether or not it was a goose or a buzzard that smashed into your windshield. Then again, there are no feathers.
Actually, it was a bug. A big bug. A very big bug! A very large big bug! But, of course, you had just cleaned the windshield a couple hours earlier to remove all the other signs of aerial collisions, and this one hit right in your line of sight. Don’t that just jerk a knot in your rope?
I almost won’t wash my windshield ’cause I know dad-gummed good and well another bug is gonna slam into me within a couple hours. And woe be unto you if you turn on the windshield wipers in an attempt to wash off the goo. No, sir! It ain’t gonna happen.
What will happen is the bug guts will smear an irremovable and impenetrable streak, approximately ten to twenty times wider and taller than the splatter spot, from the extreme side of the viewing area of your windshield, to the other extreme side of your windshield. Within .0023547 of a second, the guts have ionized and are absorbed into the porous cells of the glass. The paste is now so thick, very little light is allowed through, much less your vision. TNT wouldn’t get it out now.
You know, this happens to me so many times I wonder if bugs are just naturally attracted to me and my truck. Of course, there is an upside to such events. My first thought after another bug bites the dust…, or in this case, bites the windshield, is, “it took guts to do that!”
The next thought is, “I bet he ain’t got the guts to do it again!”
At least I have the satisfaction of knowing there is one less bug out there who will permanently plant his keester on my windshield. On the other hand, if someone could harness and bottle the adhesive traits of bug guts, Super Glue would be outta business and he’d be a multimillionaire in a few months.
Galen White is a columnist for the Bossier Press-Tribune. Visit bossierpress.com to see more from Galen.
