Bugging out

Yes indeed, if you live on the East Coast and haven't heard that the cicadas of the ominously sounding Brood X are set to emerge SOON (SOON! ALMOST RIGHT AWAY!), than you are obviously one of those said cicadas and are still pushing your way up through the topsoil.

Here in the greater DC area the Washington Post is all a-twitter about the event. In lunch rooms, people drone on endlessly about what the last emergence was like, and women hop about squeaking about the horror if one of these creatures might land in your hair. Or on your shoulder or indeed anywhere within 20 feet of one's persona, which, if the Post articles are even 50% accurate, is going to be a pretty hard for a cicada NOT to do. (I'm sorry, dear readers, but it is always my fair sex that says these things, and we at Dr. Curmudgeon believe in accuracy in media. )

I have been a bit confused by these recollections/fears, because I was not only alive and sentient during the last emergence in 1987, but I also take a general kindly interest in the bug world. Surely I would have noticed if the earth started swarming with cicadas. I can only conclude that we were in a low cicada density pocket or all the critters in the country ate them. Either or indeed both are possible.

In any case, I am rather looking forward to this cicada action. I doubt it will be a patch on something really daunting, like the locusts in Australia, yet reports of a 1.5 million cicadas per acre are rather stimulating. Perhaps excessively stimulating. Cicadas can be rather loud.