March 29, 2024

The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming!

Dubbed ominously as Brood II, more than 30 billion cicadas are emerging from a 17-year-long slumber underneath Earth along the East Coast. As we speak these beady-eyed winged menaces are clawing forth from the ground with only one thing on their collective minds: insect sex.

Insect sex is gross and I don’t commonly enjoy discussing it amongst others, but it’s true. Isn’t the circle of life an amazing thing?

From North Carolina to Connecticut these one inch long cicadas, which have red eyes and taste nothing like chicken, have finally come home to roost. And by come home to roost I mean have lots and lots of insect sex — or as I refer to it, insex .

After a long 17 years in the dirt, and having spent most of that time as a wingless nymph, the Brood II cicadas will immediately shed their skin and molt.

Who can blame them, right? If I was in a coma that lasted 17 years and I woke up in a pair of bibbed overalls, a Hypercolor shirt and a pair of Reebok Pumps, the first thing I would do would be to change my attire.

I might also wonder why I was in a coma for so long without someone changing my clothes.

Imagine what all of these cicadas have missed out on in all that time.

In 1996 a cell phone was almost a status symbol and now the president gives them away for free to poor people. When their insect sect went into seclusion Billie Ray Cyrus topped the charts, but in this modern age now it’s his mildly-annoying daughter, Miley.

When these cicadas last went inactive society was using computer modems and now wireless Internet connections allows even an amateur to illegally download a bootlegged copy of “Iron Man 3” in like, what, seven minutes?

Confusing times we’re in and these cicadas are going to have a hard time adapting. But you know what they say, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

All I know is these recent developments make me feel incredibly appreciative that I don’t reside along the Atlantic Ocean.

I shudder at the mere thought of a wall of millions and millions of bugs swarming in my general direction. No thanks, I am running.

Not the kind of running I do when I realize I left a pizza in the oven. Not even the kind of running I perform when I notice a small child is going fall out of a chair and I try to save him or her.

No, no, no, that sort of running is utter child’s play.

I’m talking a flat-out dead sprint, the kind where I flail my arms around wildly and scream like a child who wet his pants, which in all likelihood is something I would be doing anyway if I was about to be engulfed in a cloud of bugs.

Perhaps even more frightening is the fact the cicadas will outnumber the hapless residents in the region 600 to 1. I can’t even tolerate one insect, much less those statistics.

Can you imagine the weather forecast? Highs will be in the low to mid 80s with a slight chance of precipitation and then things cool down in the evening.

Oh, and there’s about a 500 percent chance that your picnic in the park or your family water park vacation is going to be ruined by a plague of perverted and invading insects.

So what advice do I have for those who live within the parameters of this evil insect infestation?

None, you’re all going to die. But you shouldn’t listen to me. I’ve been known to exaggerate slightly.

But it’s safe to say this will be one of the worst summers of your entire life.

That is, at least until 2030 when these cicadas come back again.