Cicadas

So, for the past few months, talk has been floating around about cicadas that apparently infest and inflame Baltimore every 17 years for six weeks in the most beautiful part of summer. These large insects with red eyes that devour the landscape and torment those of us with low tolerance for anything yucky are scheduled to appear any day now. Which of course, leads me to ask myself, "Why did I move to Baltimore?" Since I have lived in Baltimore, we have experienced a few natural disasters - a record-breaking blizzard my first winter living on the Eastern Seaboard, a spectacular hurricane that left me without power for an entire week, and of course, the impending cicada invasion. Several people have tried to blame me for the recent disasters that have stricken Baltimore, and while I feel guilty for a few seconds, I try to reason that they would have occurred whether I was living in Baltimore or not. I try to accept responsibility for those things that I am actually responsible for, but weather crises and insect infestations, I just cannot claim that I have control over. I guess I will never know why I moved up the coast right before some of the worst calamities that Maryland has seen, but I guess I have been duly inaugurated to living in a place where anything can happen. I just hope that the cicadas are the last thing I have to live through for a while!