This really bugs me
The cicadas are coming.
With all the social media chatter about the encroaching plague, you might expect to see a man on a horse galloping through town, announcing the invasion.
It’s been 17 years, as you know, but now’s the time for the red-eyed crunchies to crawl out of our yards. This onslaught will be called Brood VIII, and the various maps show that my town may be at the epicenter of the bug explosion.
The last cicada emergence was 2002, and I don’t remember it. Either we didn’t get many or, more likely, I was too busy to notice because my kids were really little then. You’d think that if they’d carried a few of the bugs into the house with them, I’d have noticed. More likely, the cicadas did end up in our house and our beds, and I’ve blocked out the horror.
I don’t like bugs. Also, I’m generally against worms, moths and caterpillars. The roots of this may lie in that summer morning 50-some years ago, when I walked into the woods in the back of my yard. I remember my pony tail felt tight and I was squinting in the sun. As I approached the rope swing I saw, eye-level on a tree, a creature of such spikey, winged horror I ran back to the house to bury the memory. I’ve never spoken of it until now.
It might have been a cicada, although the 17-year math doesn’t quite add up.
The aversion to caterpillars started years later, during what my family remembers as the tent worm years. Good grief, those things were awful. They grew up in the webbed nests tucked into branches of trees; we’d see them all over as we drove through the wooded neighborhoods around us. Sometimes people would torch the tents, but there were so many that come hatching time, we were infested.
During the caterpillar occupation, the crawlers were everywhere – covering the sidewalk and driveway. The yard seemed to vibrate with them. Driving down the road sounded like pouring milk on Rice Krispies, with the caterpillars crackling and popping under the tires. Some would end up in the house, having climbed aboard a dog.
And they smelled like butter. I swear they smelled like butter.
Most of us are not looking forward to the cicadas this spring, but I think I’m going to take it more personally. I like my yard and, if the predictions of location and amount are correct, our land will be polluted with bugs. They say that when the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees, they’ll come crawling out. If you look into holes before then, you might see a cicada waiting for its turn. When the eyes are red, it’s time.
I will not be joining that cicada safari. It will be bad enough after they’ve erupted. I’m worried that my bike rides on trails might include some snap-crackle-pop.
Not everyone feels the same way about the cicadas. I’m seeing social media posts from people who plan to travel to Pennsylvania to gather the bugs and take them home to eat. They taste either like peanut butter or lemons, depending on who’s eating them.
Which, by the way, will not be me. It’s bad enough I have to look a them, or write about them, or even imagine them. For the bug-lovers out there, 17 years has been too long to wait. For me, it will never be long enough.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.