By Phil Novak - North Bay Nugget
Scads of shads are still flitting about North Bay, more than a week after their emergence from Lake Nipissing.
They're everywhere - on utility poles, cars, illuminated signs, buildings and windows.
Attracted to light they swarm lamp standards in profusion, sometimes causing plans to be altered; a fastball game at a local diamond last week, for example, was halted midway through because there were just too many of the crazy critters to play.
After a below-average infestation last year, many people agree this summer's crop of shadflies is bountiful.
"There have got to be 10 times as many shadflies this year as there were last year, enough to drive you crazy," said John Wilson, president of the Downtown Improvement Area.
"If a lot of them is a sign of healthy lake, then, boy, is Lake Nipissing ever healthy."
Wilson wants to bring in volunteers to stand on Main Street with feather dusters and sweep off shadflies which have landed on people.
Len Michaud, co-owner of Michaud-Vachon Optometrists, on Main Street, said this is among the most shadflies he's seen in 20 years.
"You just finish cleaning them off your window and they're back again," Michaud said.
"This happens all day long. And the smell...."
Shadflies tend to do their thing for about three weeks.
After their death, shadfly carcasses litter sidewalks and road, making walking a crunchy experience and driving sometimes hazardous.
Then comes the ignoble burial of their remains: either in the landfill site or flushed into the city sewer system via a good hosing-down.
A cool period last summer may may have accounted for the drop in shadflies then, speculated Ministry of Natural Resources biologist Rebecca Burns.
Their numbers normally have to be high, Burns said, since shads are fed upon by Walleye during the summer and perch and other fish all year round.
"So their strategy to survive is to overwhelm the fish by numbers," Burns said.
There may very well be more shadflies this year, although the biological process they go through could inflate the numbers, Burns said.
"After they hatch, fly and land, they shed their outer bodies so, in essence you end up with two carcasses after they die."
Des Anthony, co-founder of Nipissing University and its first science professor, said the city could be experiencing multiple waves of shadflies.
"There is more than one species of the fly so these species may be emerging in quick succession and in more than just a single hatch," said Anthony, a biologist and environmental scientist.
"In fact I'm pretty certain multiple hatches are occurring in sequence, a week after each other. You have one relatively large emergence, then it kind of peters off and then another wave follows."
The scientific name of the shadfly's family, Ephemeroptera, means "living for a day with wings."
And that definition is accurate, considering the short life of the average shadfly.
Spending most of their days at the bottom of the lake, they emerge to fly, mate, lay eggs and die, all within a day or two. Some hasten their demise by completing their tasks in less than two hours, inspiring German writer Johann Goethe to create a brief paean to the fated fliers, said Tim Tiner and Doug Bennet in their book Up North Again.
"Nature holds a couple of draughts from the cup of love to be fair payment for the pains of a lifetime," Goethe wrote.
Former North Bayite Jacob Norris, who lives and works in Seattle, Wa., has been on the shadfly watch from afar.
Norris, a shadfly devotee and graphic designer, created shadfly.com and is asking city residents to email him photos of shads he can post on his site.
"We don't have shadflies here in Seattle," Norris laments. "The only exotic things that come out here in the summer time are Ferraris and Lamborghinis."
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