The Newnan Times-Herald
Alex McRae is a writer and ghostwriter and author of There Ain’t No Gentle Cycle on the Washing Machine of Love. He can be reached at: alexmmcrae@gmail.com .
Before the interstate highways opened, it was hard to drive a dozen miles down a Deep South back road without running past a hand-lettered sign saying, “Repent. The End is Near.”
Those old signs posted by anonymous prophets are mostly gone. But a new sign that the end is near is about to pop up. It won’t be on the side of the road. And it will not be pretty.
Experts just announced that the latest crop of the dreaded 17-year cicadas is due to hatch this spring.
If you thought the plague of locusts God dumped on Egypt to convince Pharaoh to set the Israelites free was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
If I’d know this was coming I’d have requested ear muffs for Christmas. These noisy, irritating insects screech and groan all night. Their roar is annoying, constant and cringe-inducing. If
Satan has a choir, it sounds like this.
I’m not surprised that it’s happening. I’m just disappointed in the timing. This is one event that was made for 2020.
Experts call this batch of hatchlings Brood X. They will number in the billions. And if cicadas are active in your area, they will make your life miserable.
According to Cicada Mania, a website that tracks cicada life cycles, Brood X will show up in seventeen states. My home state of Georgia is the southernmost stop on the tour.
Alabama will not be affected. Maybe Bama football coach Nick Saban is involved.
Having one cicada in your backyard is annoying. But billions? Why so many? Michigan State University entomologist Gary Parsons claims to have the answer.
“By emerging in the millions all at once,” Parsons said, “they are too numerous for any predators to wipe them out. There are so many that lots of them will always survive."
That sentence could also describe Washington, D.C., lobbyists, who are even more numerous — and annoying — than cicadas.
But I digress.
Parsons said that after spending almost two decades underground, Brood X hatchlings seem to know they have a very short lifetime. And they don’t waste a minute of it.
As soon as they hatch the new cicadas park on top of the nearest tree and start looking for love. Cicadas don’t have CD players, so the males screech to attract females. Couples meet and mate, producing billions of eggs.
And then they die.
To sum up, these cicadas sleep for seventeen years, wake up, have sex and die. When I was seventeen and desperate for a date, that’s an option I would have considered. I got over it.
No matter how you slice it, the only thing worse than ugly is annoying.
Cicadas are both.
When I lived in New Orleans the local paper did a feature story on a seventy-something retired stripper. A photo caption described her as a “timeless beauty.”
Nobody ever said that about a cicada.
If the new administration in D.C. is serious about keeping citizens safe, they should create a Bureau of Bug Birth Control and order the troops to destroy Brood X before that bunch has a chance to mate. I will gladly donate a can of Cicada-strength RAID!
So, does this mean 2021 could be as bad as 2020?
Consider this — when Jesus was born, God sent a choir of heavenly hosts to announce the birth of our Lord and Savior.
In 2021, he’s sending humanity a billion screeching cicadas.
You make the call.
Alex McRae is a writer and ghostwriter and author of There Ain’t No Gentle Cycle on the Washing Machine of Love. He can be reached at: alexmmcrae@gmail.com .
"bad" - Google News
February 06, 2021 at 08:52PM
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Bad Timing - Newnan Times-Herald
"bad" - Google News
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