Indian Pipe

When I first walked the beach this morning there was plenty of evidence of last night’s bug bacchanalian orgy. The sand was littered with the carcasses of dead mayflies. It wasn’t the sight of their corpses that first caught my attention, but rather the snap, crackle and pop sounds that my footsteps made whenever I stepped on one and crushed its exoskeletons. I was confused by the sound at first and thought it might be some sort of novel settling of the sand. I soon put two-and-two together, because there were enough bodies littering the beach that you could have walked from one end to the other without ever touching sand. Pretty gross huh? Well. that’s nature for you though.