"Attack of the Cicadas!"...coming to a movie theater near you!

I know I still owe a post about the trip down to Alabama after the tornadoes hit, but for now this is the hell us Nashvillians are currently going through.

Prepare to be grossed out...no, for real.

So, back when I was trying to figure out where to move to and was asking everyone about Nashville, I'll have you know that NO ONE said a SINGLE WORD about the cicadas.  Oh My Freaking Gosh!

So a couple of weeks ago I started noticing these exoskeleton/cocoon type things on the leaves in the trees.  Um, okay.

Then I started hearing some of the locals talk about how they think they heard a cicada (uh ohhh). Ummmm....okkkaayyy...not really sure what a cicada is or what the big deal is, but, whatev.  And then, what seemed like overnight, I became very much aware of what had everyone talking.  Holy Cicadas, batman!  These suckers are over an inch long, have intense red bug eyes (the kind that are staring at you no matter where you're at), and are EVERYWHERE!  So glad I decided to move here just in time for this little piece of heaven! Fortunately I've only had one on me thus far - each day at work I hear more horror stories about them crawling on people.  You can't have your car windows down because they're always flying around (oh yes, these lovely creatures have wings) not to mention how loud they are.  The local news did a small bit on them - apparently their noise averaged out to about 80 db whereas city traffic is at about 85 db.  Absolutely ridiculous how these little things can make so much noise...oh wait, probably because there's like a bazillion of them all doing it constantly in unison!  Apparently they are most abundant in middle Tennessee - hence the influx in population in May in Nashville.  Awesome.  I was finally relieved to find out that the mass population of these creatures only happens once every 13 years.  <Huh?!> Bizarre, but thank goodness!  Apparently they burrow underground, go through some transformations and stay down there for 13 years, then come back up (I'm talking in the millions) to chill out in the plants for their final molt and emerge an annoying insect where the males hoot and holler at a ridiculous volume to mate for a month, then they all die.  Wow, what a life.

Unfortunately, my cube is just one office away from the window on the first floor so I have to listen to them all day.  Monday they started going in full-force so I went and looked out the breakroom window and "Ewww!!", they were covering the tree outside.  It may just look like the tree''s got crazy bark on it, but negatron - those are tons of cicadas covering it.

Thankfully, I will be leaving town for the next 3 weekends so I won't have to deal with these suckers much before they die out.  They are already starting to be on the decline (probably mainly because of all the cars they're flying into) so I think I can survive my first full cicada season!!

...but don't be surprised if you see them as the next stars in a cheap horror flick! Bleck!