The battle of the cicadas

Sara, you asked for a funny story on my blog, so this one's for you...

So I thought that cicadas only came out every so many years.  No one told me that there'd be some in my backyard this morning.  But let me back up and give you a little background information.  The last huge cicada outbreak was my senior year of high school--right at graduation time.  Well our graduation was held outside on the football field.  And I was absolutely terrified that these bugs were going to swarm me and sent me running for my life in that ridiculous bright blue cap and gown.  I was praying hard for rain so they'd move it into the gym, but no luck.  Ultimately it turned out fine, but I am still a bit scarred from the incident.

Now for today.  If you're in  Nashville today you know that it is a beautiful day outside--not too hot and low humidity (a rarity in August!).  So Campbell and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and the fact that Andrew has been rockin' out his morning naps (yesterday was a 3 hour one that I woke him up from!).  We went out to swing on his swing set, and everything seemed fine.  Then I heard it.

It was that unmistakable sound that I can't even describe right now.  I frantically searched for the source, and then I found it.  It had landed on the beam right next to the swing I was pushing Campbell in.  It's sad to say this, but my first thought was to run away from it.  But I couldn't just leave Campbell there.  He was oblivious of the bug and his mother's impending panic attack.

Let me just describe this thing for a minute.  For those of you who grew up in the country, this thing looked like a horse fly that was on some serious steroids.  For those of you wondering what in the world a horse fly is, it looked like the biggest and scariest fly you've ever seen--outside of the movie The Fly which freaks me out completely.

I summoned up every bit of courage I could and removed me flip flop.  I thought if I could scare it, maybe it would leave us alone.  After all, don't people always say that bugs and things are more afraid of us than we are of them?  In this case, I highly doubt it.  Whack, I smacked the beam very near to the freakishly large and scary bug.  It circled the play set a few times then flew away.

Whew, I thought, even patted myself on the back for a minute thinking how brave I was.  But then I heard the sound again.  And then it was coming from the other side.  Yikes.  There's more of them!  And then I spotted another one flying over our yard.  It didn't stop, but it appeared to be casing us.  I just knew that the screeches and buzzes I heard were the cicadas all over the neighborhood gearing up to wage an all-out attack on us.  

We stayed out in the yard for about an hour total, but by that time, my nerves were shot.  I was seriously freaking out at every sound.  I even saw a few more cicadas fly around us.  That was enough for me.  Let's go inside and get a snack, I told Campbell.  And of course, he agreed.  Safe at last!

The moral of the story is, I may have won this battle, but the cicada war is far from over.  Beware!!