Bug-phobic dread the looming swarm of Brood II cicadas

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2013/05/18/6cea6be6-bd6e-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html?hpid=z1

The night started with one tiny click near the bedroom window.

Then came another, and another, until a great oak beside Lori Milani’s South Arlington apartment was alive with an almost deafening roar of cicadas.

“It sounded like a human being murdered,” Milani said, recalling her anxious reaction to the emergence of cicadas in 2004, when she shut herself inside for five weeks to avoid them. “I was really afraid they would come into the apartment.”

For people like Milani, a graphic artist who struggles with her fear of bugs, the coming swarm of cicadas — which were spotted as nearby as Fredericksburg last week — elicits a single response: Dread.

[marions ghost]

1. Lots worse things to dread

Wouldnt like that buzzy noise all the time, but at rare intervals it can be an energizing thing. As for the bugs themselves well I grew up playing with their shells, so they don't scare me.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. My wife went absolutely berserk during an earlier swarm

We had just built a house on the edge of the woods, so the surrounding soil was cleared of all ground cover. When the cicadas started emerging, it gave the appearance of a baby Swiss cheese - thousands of perfectly round holes about 1/2" in diameter. Later, the air was abuzz with cicadas frantically looking for mates, and the occasional bug would collide with anyone standing outside. She would emit the most blood-curdling scream imaginable whenever one made contact with her.