The second plague
The first half of this year was all about the cicadas. News reports began emerging in February or March, warning readers to prepare for the coming buggy storm. It was hyped and explained in breathless prose laden with scientific gobbledygook, and the populace (including me) was whipped into an "eeks, the cicadas are coming!" frenzy. Then, it was hyped some more. And some more.
But at least for city folk like me, this invasion of cicadas—forecast to block out the sun and drown out the regular springtime sounds of lawnmowers and weed whackers and allergic, snuffle-upagus-size sneezes—was a great big "whoopdidoop."
Yes, bugs were scattered here and there on the ground, in various stages between still-kickin' and squished-to-death. And yes, they were big and stupid-looking and icky, and just thinking about them makes the bile in my stomach churn. But the whole thing wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I could still step outside my house and walk to the bus stop relatively unscathed. A smattering of splattered carcasses created something of an obstacle course, but life did not become something out of the Twilight Zone or X-Files. (Granted, I mostly stayed away from the green places, where I know it was much worse. I visited a greenish place near the end of the cicadas' mighty run, where a handful of bugs ran into me in their misguided, look-at-me-flying-like-a-drunk-bug way. It was not pleasant.)
But back to the point of this post (yes, there is one—patience, grasshopper): Can someone please explain to me what was going on with the bugs tonight?!
Anyone reading this who happened to be walking on Columbia Road between 16th and 18th streets around dusk will know exactly what I'm talking about.
I got off the bus at 16th and Columbia around 8 p.m. As I walked to the corner and waited to cross the street, I started feeling little things pelting me—my arms, my face. And I realized, these were little bugs. Lots of little bugs. Swarming about and colliding with me.
At first, I thought, "Christ—what did I eat today that would be attracting all these bugs?" You see, I'm one of those people who, if plopped outside with a group of other humans, ends up being the only one to get eaten alive by creepy-crawly creatures. Mosquitoes? They love me. Can't get enough of me. So when bugs start attacking, I generally assume that it's only me.
Tonight, though, I realized that the people walking in front of me were also under attack. They made the same frantic swatting motions as I did as we all tried to get where we were going.
These buggers were relentless. They went kapow, kapow, kapow, and then they clung and started to crawl. They stuck to clothes, to people's hair. Tried to fly into people's mouths. (Besides the frantic swatting motions, there was also lots of spitting.) They made as if they wanted to craw up sleeves and under skirts, the little perverts.
When that many bugs hit, the skin has a tendency to feel as if it's still crawling, long after the bugs have all been flicked away. As I sit here typing this, it's nearly four hours after I made my way through the swarm, and my arms and chest are still itching from the footprints of itty-bitty legs.
This was seriously traumatizing, people. So can someone, anyone, please tell me: What was UP?
