The Situation

It has been seventeen years since the populace, including, in the interests of full disclosure, your humble correspondent, re-elected Bill Clinton President of this our Great Republic. I bring this up not to say anything negative about Bill Clinton or his administration--at this point, I am sure that neither you nor I have any interest in that--but to point out that it has, in fact, been seventeen years since his re-election, and here in our happy burg the arrival of the seventeenth year means one thing and one thing only: the cicadas have returned. Yes, they have, billions of the ugly little bastards, swarming up out of the ground in never-ending waves and shrieking from sunrise to sunset for sex. That’s all it’s about, kids, just sex morning, noon, and night, a fact brought home forcibly to me when I found two of the loathsome little bugs having at it on my windshield wipers.  I was late for work that day, so I just drove in with them still having at it the whole way in.  They were not there when I went home, so I am assuming that they toddled off after a post-coital cigarette and maybe a cup of coffee. I also assume that the guy involved bragged to all his friends about how he made the earth move for her.  That these damn things are going at it hammer and tongs is fine by me; a species must do what is necessary to preserve itself, after all, but I would prefer that they not use my car for such purposes and I would really prefer that they keep quiet about it, which is not at all what they are doing.  The decibel level of their shrieking varies from place to place, I’ve found, and one of the places the horny little bastards are shrieking the loudest is in the woods around my house.  Because of this, I can’t hear myself think in the morning, thanks to the hormonal jackhammering going on all over the place. It’s like being stuck at the junior prom with the heavy metal freaks for weeks on end.  People tell me that all of this shrieking will end in just a little while, when the cicadas are all done mating or the birds and the squirrels have finished eating their fill of them, which is what they were telling me a month ago and it still hasn't happened. To tell the truth, I can’t wait for them to go away, a trait they share with the former junior Senator from Illinois, although I am already feeling a bit sorry for the last one out of the ground.  He finally makes his way to the surface, climbs a tree, molts his exoskeleton, dries his wings, and then starts shrieking, “Yo yo yo, the situation has arrived, where the babes at,” only to have the katydids and the grasshoppers tell him that the party’s over, dude, and you missed it. That really must suck big time.