Sassy's Up Late Again

Further evidence that my life is composed of pure fiction. We have cicadas. Oh sure, most of the eastern Midwest is overrun with them this spring. I thought little of it as the buzz began in the media about how "they've returned after 15 years". I see cicadas every spring. I had no idea we would have near biblical swarms of them. When I went out to my car this morning, it was dotted with the damned things. I didn't have my camera, so the next best thing was to take a shot of my kids' toys in the yard when I came back home this afternoon.

They are crawling all over everything, finding places to cling to while they emerge from their shells.

Close up, they look almost alien...

Of course they look icky as hell, and their newborn flight is clumsy and inaccurate, which means that as you walk across your driveway or sidewalk, they begin flinging themselves willy-nilly in a panicked attempt to avoid being crushed. But for some reason, the most disturbing thing to me is the sound. I don't hear any of them "singing" in my immediate area, it all seems relatively quiet, but for the past 3 days, out in the distance, there is a whirring, humming sort of noise constantly hanging in the air. It is the exact sound effect often used in 50's sci-fi flicks for UFO's. I keep expecting to see a flying saucer lurching over the treeline, prepared to shoot giant white laser beams at the rows of tanks that are surely lined up just out of sight in preparation for the War of the Worlds.

Perhaps the past couple of months HAVE been a dream after all, and it has just turned from sexual fantasy into science-fiction horror. I'll wake up any second now...