Monday, Mar. 29, 2004 - 5:12 P.M.

Well it�s almost here. The invasion. The locusts. Cicadas. Hell�s Beady Eyed Soldiers. Huge-Ass Red Eyed Flying Menaces. Whatever you call them, they are about to arrive in the South.

I was 16 the last time they were here. One afternoon in my high school English class someone lobbed an otherwise empty Coke can full of cicadas into the room. Of course, when the can hit the floor, they flew out. Mayhem and hilarity ensued. I mean, it�s funny now .

Also in English that year, someone paid Marty WhoseLastNameShallRemainSecretAsHeIsAMoron twenty-five cents to eat two cicadas. They are three inches long! Six inches of bug. One quarter. What a dip shit. I ran into him years later in the Emergency Room, seems his toddler daughter had eaten a bug. Like father, like daughter, I guess.

There are two varieties of cicadas--one arriving every 13 years and one who is nice enough to wait four extra years, arriving every 17 years.

Here are a few facts:

--Once the female cicada comes above ground, she mates. Then she lays her eggs and dies. (Gah! Is there at least a little insect foreplay? Some wing massaging? Beady bedroom eyes?)

--The cicada can lay four hundred to six hundred eggs. (Damn! If I blink like, 400 times, I need a nap.)

--A cicada can chirp so loud you can hear it from half a mile away. (Half. A. Mile. You can�t even hear my CAR from half a mile away.)

--A male cicada abdomen has two drum like sound chambers that vibrate. (Hmmm�he gets groovy vibrating sound chambers, she gets to push out 400-600 eggs and take a dirt nap. Fair?)

--The male cicada makes the loudest sound in the insect world. His mating call. (He must be very cock-of-the-walk at the insect union meetings.)

Rumor has it that in the counties that will bear the brunt of the invasion (of which, my county is included) the cicada population could reach 1.5 million per acre.

I have 5 � acres.

17 years. 5 million male cicadas. 5 million booty calls. 17 years from now, 3,000,000,000 eggs on my property.

Swell.

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Coffee? Tea? Map? - Monday, Nov. 07, 2005

� Purplecigar

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