Gail Helen Bremner

The Cicada Menace

Posted on May 28th, 2007 by gail helen.
Categories: Personal, Omnia Vanitas, Current Events, Meta-Fors, Random.

Ok, so I’ve been waiting for over a week for the little green devils to pop out of the ground and start grossing me out. I still remember the spring of 1990, when the last brood covered my entire school yard, until one day they all died and littered the asphalt with their crunchy little corpses. It is impossible to describe the smell, which is unbelievable in coming from dead insects. Ugh. They’re supposed to spring forth in May, so they should come sometime this week. I think, besides the fact they’re six legged flying uglies, the true reason they disconcert me so much is the very nature of their life cycle — they spend 17 years buried in dirt, only to emerge into the sun for a brief and brutal time. If they can beat the odds and avoid being eaten like a Thanksgiving dinner by the various birds, wasps, and spiders that relish them, they get to spend 4 weeks reproducing before their lives end. Too much mortality for me, I think.

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