Texas

Energy and Environment Reporting for Texas

What’s With All the Crane Flies This Year?

Photo by Nathan Bernier/KUT News

Monica Malone, general manager at J&J Pest Control, holds a sticky strip covered in dead crane flies.

You’ve probably seen them hovering at your windows or waiting at your door. A few may have even flown into your house. They look like giant mosquitoes, and they appear to be everywhere this season. Say hello to the Crane Fly.

As Texas A&M University points out on its site devoted to the fly, “large numbers of adult crane flies can be a nuisance indoors” but they are “medically harmless.”

So why are there so many flying around this year? For StateImpact Texas partner KUT News, Nathan Bernier looks at how a dry year followed by a wetter-than-usual winter has led to a proliferation of the bug:

The explosion of crane flies is a direct product of two things: the drought killed a bunch of plants, and recent rains helped those dead plants rot. Thereā€™s nothing that crane fly larvae love more than rotting plant matter.

Crane flies arenā€™t the only insect that benefited from theĀ 13 inchesĀ toĀ 16 inchesĀ ofĀ rain Austin has received since January. Fire ants are making a comeback too, says Wizzie Brown, an entomologist with theĀ Texas Agrilife Extension Service. She tries to lure them out of their holes with hot dogs by placingĀ a slice of the meat into a clear pill bottle and waiting about an hour.

Read the full story at KUT.

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