rivka

So I thought I was going to be able to deal with the cicadas.

No, not when I first realized that this was the year. Then I was threatening to stay inside the house for a month, even if it meant losing my job and starving to death. I know that doesn't count as "dealing with" them. But later...

The parking lot for my clinic in the suburbs of DC is at the top of the hill, and there's a tree-shaded flight of steps leading down to the clinic. One day, there was a cicada perched on the railing. Big, ugly black-and-red bugger, with bulging red eyes. I edged my way past and went into the clinic. By afternoon, the railings were clear. The next day, there were several more cicadas perched on the railings, and again they were gone by afternoon.

I formulated a theory, based on the various "Oh God, The Cicadas Are Coming" stories in the press. I thought that cicadas crawled out of the ground at night, molted, and climbed up the nearest vertical thing. When they found a tree, they stayed there until eventually they lay their eggs and died. I figured that, for a non-arboreal type like me, the only danger of close contact with a cicada came in that early-morning period when they were looking for a tall thing. And I figured that my several-cicada railing encounters were a product of that morning activity, sure to end when all the cicacas had emerged from the ground and made their way up the trees. I was supported in my theory by the fact that, in Iowa, I had never seen an annual cicada - just heard them. They stayed in the trees.

Everyone in a Brood X state is laughing at me now, aren't they?

Then came the day last week when I drove down to my DC clinic and found that the cicadas were everywhere. Forget six or seven bugs demurely perched on a railing - they were everywhere. Lurching about in the air like demented hummingbirds. Squashed on the sidewalk. Crawling around. Infiltrating the building in their squashed-and-repulsive form. Hundreds of them. I held my hand over my mouth every time I had to go outside.

But I was still optimistic about Baltimore. I'd heard them when I went to the grocery store, which is in a more wooded neighborhood, but my neighborhood is all brick and concrete. I felt very safe, especially after the hordes had come out in DC.

Wednesday morning I walked to the gym. I started noticing squashed cicadas on the sidewalk, perhaps one or two per block.

Today they were everywhere. Dive-bombing my window. Crawling up the side of the building. Squashed on the street, on the polished floor of the lobby, on the stairs. Creeping along the ground malevolently. Perched in my flowerpot. Detatched wings skating along in the breeze. Everywhere.

They're big enough that you can see them flying on the other side of the street.

I now know that, in fact, I'm not going to be able to deal with the cicadas at all.