Last year Burning Man was flooded by heavy rain, which meant the world-famous festival had to be postponed. Last night saw loads of Twitter posts surfacing that detailed a flood of a different kind that is troubling Burning Man and its visitors at the moment: bugs.
“[..] Heather wears a welding mask most of the day. Bugs have crawled up inside her visor and nestled around her eyes”
Bugs on the playa this year. Not normal. Shouldn’t a dust storm knock them out? Like Burningman wasn’t gross enough. pic.twitter.com/pkLrdUy25q
— khloe morris (@khloestarr) August 18, 2015
It’s fairly strange that the hundreds of thousands of insects are present in the desert heat. One explanation could be that continuous spring and summer rain has “hatched critters that lie dormant”. John Curley’s Burning Man blog reports on the infestation on the spot, painting a very disturbing, and disgusting picture of the Playa:
You may have seen the bug rumors on the internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well, maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you.
Twin Peaks, who’s leading the construction of the Center Café, was talking about how bad they are when she jumped a little and pulled her t-shirt away from her body. A good-sized green bug fell to the ground. It had crawled into her bra.
Metal Shop Heather wears a welding mask most of the day. Bugs have crawled up inside her visor and nestled around her eyes. Cammy and Stinger needed some help from the medical team to deal with the infestation; Stinger’s back was covered with nasty red welts from the bites.
What’s going on? We don’t know. We don’t know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you’re likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things. They’ve blown up inches deep against the sides of the Commissary tent. They’ve covered the carpets at the Depot. They’re all over the Man Base. So it’s not a localized occurrence, it’s everywhere.
We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood from somewhere. Or maybe, as Shade postulated out at Man Base, there’s a Johnny Bugseed making the rounds at night, sprinkling them anywhere and everywhere.
We’ve been blessed by fair skies so far during the build. For the first time in the past several years, there’s been no rain or lightning or hail or high winds to bring things to a crawl. But maybe we are making our way around the various plagues, and this year it’s time for pestilence.
Marcia said that one had flown into her mouth gotten lodged between her teeth. She reports that they are quite bitter to the taste.
We don’t know how long it will last. Cobra Commander said at the morning meeting that high temperatures will be with us again today, and the hope is that the heat and the dryness will knock down the bug population. “Because otherwise we’re gonna have to nuke the city” to get rid of them”.