I'm here; the Cicadas are gone

Vacation's over.  Beautiful Bermuda is but a piece of my memory.  I guess it's more than that to the people who live there, but you know what I mean. 

It was a cruel return to reality when my return flight was delayed until 2 a.m. the morning of our return.  Then our car broke down (they can't figure out what's wrong with it), our internet stopped working (I'm currently on modem number three in the past week), and our lawn guy stood us up right before we had relatives in town, causing me to spend a morning searching in vain to find an emergency lawnmower on short notice.  The Frogs of Doom are back in my neighbor's pool.

And I didn't even mention my real job.

One of Newton's most overlooked laws of physics is that your everyday life will go to pieces immediately upon your return from vacation.  Trust me, I'm definitely back.  I'm not happy about it, but I'm here. 

As for you, you really, really hate cicadas.  Not that I blame you, of course.  Those things are gross.  The cicadas attack! column alone did more traffic than I often get in an entire month. 

The cicadas brought me by far the most read blog post of all time, but I'm still thankful they are--finally--gone.  No amount of ad money is worth having to live with thousands of the insectual embodiment of Satan at your doorstep.  Actually it might be ok if they were at your doorstep, but it's certainly not worth it if they are at mine.  

When the cicadas come back in 13 years to take over Nashville once again, I will have a more organized plan to fight back.  Next time, I'm going to Bermuda for an entire month. 

Until then, the blog is back.  You can expect at least one post a week (usually on Tuesday, but give me a day's leeway either direction if life gets crazy). 

Which it will.  Because my vacation is over.

Cicadas Attack!

That buzz you hear in the background isn't the onset of the end of the world--we're not so lucky. Judgment Day might have resulted in our collective eternal damnation, but at least it would have at least saved us from the Attack of the Killer Cicadas.

There are 1.5 million people in the greater Nashville area, but the Killer Attack Cicadas have us hopelessly outnumbered. Once upon a time, I thought the idea of strange-looking, locust-like bugs that emerge from the ground precisely every 13 summers was loveably eccentric, almost charming. Others thought the same.

We were horribly, horribly wrong.

We’ve woefully underestimated our opponent.

The cicadas are not only here, they are on the verge of becoming the Tyrannical Insect Overlords of Middle Tennessee. There is no escape. Cicadas are everywhere, and we are at their mercy. If you try to kill one, it laughs defiantly until five more instantly appear in its place. And they are just here; they are here to take over.

It wouldn’t be so bad if our conquerors weren’t so ugly. Words don’t exist to describe how disgusting these things are. If you picture a massive flying cockroach with gigantic, bulging, red eyes, and the legs of a gigantic fly, you get about half of the right mental image. Add in a pair of bright yellow wings and an exterior shell that they are constantly molting out of, and you have a rough idea of the terror cicadas present by their sheer presence.

Which is, of course, all part of their plan to take over.

The worst part is that as ugly as these things are, they are twice as loud. About noon, the male cicadas start their deafening, buzzing mating call and continue it until dusk. That their mating call doesn’t seem to work in those 8 hours is no surprise. A female cicada would have to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy past drunk to ever agree to reproduce with something that looks that awful.

But that just means the males come back the next day, slightly louder and more, um, anxious, than they were the day before. So far, this has been going on for about two weeks. Two weeks from now, we’ll all have been driven insane.

Our current, human government has even warned citizens against cutting their grass during mating hours. This is because of the very real risk the amorous Female Attack Cicadas might hear the buzzing, notice that a lawnmower and its attached human look MUCH more attractive than their other mating options, and swarm the innocent bystander in a massive orgy.

It’s a disgusting thought, but really, who can blame them? Have you seen a male cicada?

The government tells us that the cicadas are harmless. They say that they (the cicadas) just want to mate and go back inside the ground for the next 13 years. I’m pretty sure the powers-that-be just don’t want us to panic because they realize resistance is futile. They are probably working out the terms of our unconditional surrender as we speak.

The cicadas are everywhere, too numerous to defeat.

Drive down the street, and a swarm of cicadas attack your windshield.

Sit in your house and they crawl at your window, plotting their advance into your home. Open your car door to enter, and they swarm in, leaving you trapped and at their mercy.

Walk down the sidewalk, they fly at your face. One can get a workout just walking 200 feet and dodging a swarming insect every two seconds. That is, if you can manage to get out of their way.

It’s like a plague out of Exodus, only God wasn’t nearly angry enough at the Egyptians to allow something like this. Instead, He went easy on them and took their firstborn sons.

Perhaps you think I’m overstating things.

Perhaps you are their next victim.

I don’t plan to be. Some claim that cicadas only buzz around for a month before the desperate female cicadas, noticing the bar is closing, give in to the advances of their obnoxious pursuers, allowing the cicadas go away for 13 more years. In a month, they say, the cicadas will be gone.

But why would they want to leave when their battle is already won?

Regardless of their intent, we can’t afford to wait it out. We must evacuate while we still can, flee Middle Tennessee and hope the cicadas will be content with controlling Nashville. Perhaps they’ll decide they like country music and be content to not to advance further.

But we must act now. If we don’t do something, a month from now a horde of gas powered lawnmower/cicada hybrids may well be mowing us down left and right.