Do I bug you?

I

have previously stated my distaste for bugs, but I must admit that I am still fascinated by them. Yeah, I guess that make me a hypocrite. But not really. It's like people who feel badly about people who get into accidents, but still can't help but stare and ogle at the scene of one--for the record, I don't ogle at accidents.

Anyway, I had heard that there are a bunch of cicadas in certain areas but very few around my neighborhood. I think we found three shells in front of our house and no live ones at all. I supposed that the area I live in had gone under heavy development over the past few decades--ground being dug up and underground bugs being disturbed and killed--so I was kinda relieved... and disappointed. All this hype about kazillions of bugs and... prfffzt, nothing.

M and I decided to go for a jog, and we discovered one of the reasons why we haven't seen many live ones. As we fast-walked to the park, we noticed a few squirrels sitting on their hind legs chomping on their lunch. The squirrels around here are not the kind you find on the Washington Mall or college campuses. They are not fat, and they will scamper away at the site of a human, especially this human--one of the boogers tried to create a nest in my attic and caused over a thousand dollars of damage. But these squirrels did not run away. They stayed put, as if what they were eating was far more important. I leaned forward to get a better look and it was eating a cicada! Chomp-chomp then *pui* to spit out a wing. I had hear that these things are a delicacy to animals and they were right. I thought squirrels were vegetarians like rabbits, eating nuts and berries and leafy things only. You learn something new everyday.

But then, as M and I neared the park, we hear an eerie hum, that slowly turned into a loud trill... cicadas! And it wasn't the screeching sounds I had heard in Japan. Song of Brood X was eerie, almost alien, UFO-like. As I started to pay attention to my surroundings, I found dead cicadas on the path, and thousands of little holes where cicadas had emerged--one cicada was stuck and had died at the mouth of its hole. We decided to stop and investigate... Ugh, creepy. I wonder if only one cicada comes out of each hole? And where did they go, I don't see any flying around. So instead of looking down or around, I decide to look up at the trees directly above. Ack! I had to jump back. There were cicadas shells hanging all over the branches and leaves right above our head. I had this uncontrollable urge to scratch my head and neck and arm. Ugh, the heebie jeebies! So they are here, I thought and looked around and lo and behold, what I thought were dried out flowers turned out to be... yup, you guessed it, Live cicadas!

Okay, so I guess they're just starting to come out now in our area. And will be with us until the end of June. This is going to be a summer to remember.

As we approach the latter third of May, I should mention that another bug will soon emerge in this area. Have you ever seen a firefly? Omega01 had an interesting post on fireflies which suggested to me a kind of firefly etiquette, given the male-female ratio: 50 male to 1 female. I'm glad I'm not a firefly. And I will stop trying to catch them. I suppose if I caught only males, it would be okay, but given my poor eyesight, I would have trouble looking between their tiny legs. hehehehehe.

Ugh, I'm getting that uncontrollable urge to scratch my entire body again. Damn these bugs! I hate 'em, but I can't stay away from them...