Fear of Swarms
July 29, 2003
Like I was telling Dennis earlier, everytime I bike under a tree now, I shudder and pedal a little harder than normal. The trees are filled with those cicadas and today I had the misfortune of actually seeing one.
I had just left the subway exit and was strolling to the park. I park my bike in the park because to park near the exit, I’d have to pay something like 2,000 yen a month. It’s only about a hundred meters from the park entrance to the subway exit so I would never bother paying. About halfway to my bike, I notice something on the ground near the bus stop bench. The first thing I saw where translucent wings that resembled those of a dragonfly. Upon closer inspection, what should I see but a cicada, at least, that’s what I think was a cicada.
The sucker was huge.
Before this encounter, I had only seen their nymph forms, well, actually, I had only seen the discarded, shedded skins of their nymph forms. They were much smaller (about the size of a small walnut) and had no wings). Those I could deal with, but these winged behemoths? Nuh uh.
Like I was telling Dennis earlier, it was about the size of a D cell. I am not exaggerating like I usually do. It was fucking huge. The wings were about the length of my index finger, maybe a little shorter. The eyes! The eyes! They were bulbous and faceted. Luckily for me this particular cicada was deader than Napster (before Roxio bought the cadaver).
I wanted to take a picture with my phone but I was too disgusted to bear myself to get that close to it.
I got to my bike but just as I was unlocking it, the live cicadas in the trees started making their wretched screeching again. Now, having seen an adult-sized cicada, millions of goosebumps raised from my body at the thought of millions of cicadas swarming down upon my body. I biked out of the park a lot faster than usual. Even now in the safety of home (I have screen doors), I’m still crawling with the heebie jeebies as I’m typing this story up.
I miss Canada, where the crawly creatures don’t grow bigger than the Canadian dollar.
Sorry for the shitty hyperboles today.
