the 13 year visitation of the demon red-eyed cicada

Every thirteen years the red-eyed cicadas come out of their holes in the ground in a sex frenzy and they don’t care who knows it.

This one has recently come out of that skin thingy hanging there beside it.  Aren’t they spooky looking?  With those beady, staring, red eyes?  Flying through the air, perched on every branch of every tree, in the grass, in my hair, the red-eyed cicadas are marching on the world, rubbing their legs together, creating a simply astonishing noise that, I swear, in the forest around the yurt sounds like the nuclear power plant oh-fuck alarm is going off.  It’s so loud you have to shout to be heard outside—no joke—and it’s almost as loud inside for us, since we live in a glorified tent.  They hit about a high G and there must by millions of them.  Millions. Everywhere I walk my boots crunch on abandoned exoskelotons, like I’m a terminator and I stride upon the bones of my enemies.  I’m telling you, it’s intense.

Mochi, our cat, loves it.

She just caught one here.  A moment later she strutted away with it hanging out of her mouth, still buzzing, still trying to get laid even as the cat crushes it in her mighty jaws.  BZZZZ, BZZZZ, hey, baby, hey baby!

These cicadas really do hang out in the dirt for thirteen years.  Everywhere, every six inches or so, there are dime-sized holes in the ground, tiny abandoned graves.  Zombie-bug rising! Or, you know, like someone has come along and aerated the entire forest with a really aggressive hole-maker machine.

The next time these cicadas come out Sophie will be twenty years old.  Luc will be 18.  My baby’s childhoods will be over.  Sob!

[Give me a moment here.]

Okay.  Anyway.  The cicadas are pale, even milky when they first come out, which makes the red-eyed thing even weirder.  I’m serious, these critters are the insect-undead, red-eyed zombie bugs, and they are here to eat our brains! They liquify the brains first, you see, with their tremendous noise.  I’m convinced of it.  It’s a freaking bugapocalypse out here!

Sophie took this shot, when it was all novel and interesting.  Now we just can’t believe the proliferation, nor the sound.

Last week it was fire, this week it’s locusts.  What is the world coming to?