I thought everyone was paranoid in early spring when people started mentioning the pending arrival of the cicadas. There was much moaning and gnashing of teeth. Recounted horror stories of childhood memories dominated watercooler discussions. 17 years had passed and you would have thought that the plague of all plagues was about to descend upon the tri-state area.

Starting about four weeks ago, the hype surrounding the arrival of the cicadas grew a thousand-fold. The trenches were dug. Frightened suburbanites began covering every green thing in sight with over-priced netting from that orange store. I was literally convinced that the world was ending, and I was scoffing the rest of them to high hell. I wasn’t buying into it, no sir, no way.

And then the little bastards came.

I didn’t really notice it until I was walking back from a meeting across campus and spotted a tree with a trunk that was moving. Surely if I were to ever participate in the illegal activity of consuming hallucinogenic drugs, this is one of the visuals I had always expected would accompany such. The entire trunk of this poor little tree was covered in these tiny shrieking wanna-be cockroaches. Nasty. In awe, I meandered back to my office, plunked myself down at my desk and dutifully began checking voicemails and returning emails. And then one crawled out the back of my shirt and up through my hair. Right. This was war.

Within the next few days, the full onslaught of all 5 billion (not kidding here folks) of the little jerks was realized. From dawn to dusk they shriek. I’m not sure physiologically how they do it, but their chorus is so deafening you can hear them traveling in a car at 50mph with music on and taking. With the windows closed they still overpower your conversations. It’s mind-numbing how loud these things are.

And the intelligence of them…stunning (or rather lack thereof). God certainly played a cruel joke on these things on creation day. Everyone’s heard the joke of being “last in line when God was handing out intelligence,” right? Yea, well these little asshats weren’t even aware there was a line. They fly into *everything* and don’t care. They’re like airborne thumbs. No sense of aerodynamics. They’ll fly straight at your head, bounce off, and land on their backs, unable to flip themselves over as if, “holy llamas on a stick, how’d I get here?” At least if you’re going to annoy me, be adaptively clever about it.

Life as I know it has been altered irrevocably. These small winged henchmen of Satan himself have taken away every freedom that is supposed to accompany this time of year. As spring lazily melts into summer, car windows are supposed to be down. Evening walks are to be had. Working in the sun is supposed to be rejuvenating. Now, all are lost, sacrificed at the altar of these malevolent pests. And for what, I ask? So that after 17 years these little crapballs can emerge from the ground to hump everything in site, crawl up trees, dump their spawn into the ground and go to sleep for another 2 decades. Evolution be damned, this is not to be stood for!

I’m not sure when they’re supposed to die off. All I know is that when I start having conversations with them, their little red, beady eyes staring back at me blankly, it’s time for one of us to leave. And seeing as I plan on being around next summer, I’m staking my claim. I’m taking it back. I’m taking it all back.