Vast swarms of amorous flying ants are flitting around tonight, landing in ears and hair, raining on cars and dropping into people's frappes

Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and Hyde Park Facebook groups tonight are full of accounts of people and vehicles getting stuck in a mating frenzy of zillions of tiny flying ants, in those neighborhoods and West Roxbury and Dedham, too (Update: Cambridge and Somerville, too).

People are sharing photos of cars covered in the bugs and accounts of the tiny bugs winding up in their noses and hair and buried in their dog's fur. One man enjoying a frappe outside JP Licks in Jamaica Plain reported one of the ants hit his face and then bounced into his drink.

There was a report that people were walking down Centre Street in Jamaica Plain with their tops pulled up over their faces, the more enterprising using umbrellas as big shields.

In these nuptial flights flying females mate with scads of males, who supply her enough sperm to last her years. She lands, loses her wings and begins to build a colony. The males drop dead. The question is why this is happening all at once, everywhere, at least in some neighborhoods.