Comments on: What Put the “Mormon” in “Mormon Fly” Might Not Go Well with Breakfast

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:48:55 +0000

If you had been in Nauvoo at the right time, you would remember! It is necessary to turn off ALL artificial light on the “flats” to prevent extreme pile ups.

Sadly, it’s also quite dangerous. The slick wings and the guts make a very dangerous road base along the river road, especially for motorcyclists.

By: Edje Jeter

Edje Jeter — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:24:37 +0000

Thanks, Katie.

By: Katie

Katie — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:16:48 +0000

Just letting you know it’s La Crosse, Wisconsin not Minnesota. We’re right on the Mississippi but we’re most definitely Wisconsin. We’ve had a few major hatches this year already. A really big one at the very end of May that also showed up on radar and another one during the fireworks show on the 4th.

By: Juvenile Instructor » Mormon Horns 1/7: A Selected Chronology

Juvenile Instructor » Mormon Horns 1/7: A Selected Chronology — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:01:17 +0000

[...] or using Mormons to describe something else. These include: India, Cows, Bluebeard, Lice, Crickets, Flies, Happy Valley, and sundry other beasts. [1] William W Phelps, Letter to editor, 1836 Aug 03, The [...]

By: Th.

Th. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:24:26 +0000

I had no idea they were called Mormon flies. Guess I’ve never been in Nauvoo at the right time of year….

By: Juvenile Instructor » Twin Barbarians 2: Mormon Lice

Juvenile Instructor » Twin Barbarians 2: Mormon Lice — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:31:21 +0000

[...] a previous post, I quoted an entomologist who thought the name “Mormon Fly” was “an insolvable mystery.” [1] He went on to say that “there was [...]

By: Patricia

Patricia — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:53:22 +0000

Wonderful post! I especially enjoyed your insight into how language and experience bend each other’s courses.

Once, I was caught standing out in the Allegheny River in NE Pennsylvania when a mayfly hatch started. I had been fishing for smallmouth bass, but once the hatch started, the evening’s fishing was over. Hundreds of the fairy-green mayflies landed on me, so soft-bodied that if I turned my head I crushed flies that had landed inside my collar. I stood there in the water for a long time, waiting for as many as would to take to the air again.

Mayflies do tend to affect your plans for the evening.

By: smb

smb — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:00:19 +0000

The Italian Mayfly looks like someone morphed Homer Simpson’s head onto it. Nice post.

By: Edje Jeter

Edje Jeter — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:25:05 +0000

Many thanks, as always, for the kind and encouraging words, Jared, Ardis, Elizabeth, Chris, and Kevin.

Jared: I think the most universal name was “May fly.” I haven’t looked carefully at earlier nomenclature, but mayfly and fishfly were the names I encountered most often. Wikipedia lists “dayfly”, “shadfly”, “Green Bay Flies”, “lake fly”, “fishfly,” “midgee”, “June bug”, and “Canadian Soldier,” none of which (except fishfly) I recall finding in the early documents. (But I didn’t go back and look; I’m just remembering.)

Kevin: That does sound like a great book. And it will have to wait. = ) (And I wonder if I can tell my committee to read the blogposts rather than the thesis, which will have most of the life sucked out of it so it can be respectable.)

By: kevinf

kevinf — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:54:41 +0000

Edje, this is amazing stuff. If you’ve never read it, I recommend the book “Rats. Lice, & History”, by Hans Zimmer, which is a biographical history of typhus, and the lice that spread it. It was written in 1939, I believe, and Zimmer was one of the epidemiologists who first studied the 1918 influenza outbreak. While some of the scientific data is a bit dated, he has a very tongue-in-cheek style that these bug-posts of yours have reminded me.

Although, on second thought, I should be cautious about recommending any reading to a grad student who is trying to finish a degree, especially when it might be something he would only enjoy, rather than being pertinent to his direct research.