Here are just a few of the things I’ve thought of or learned from the offensive number of cicadas that have recently started appearing where we live in New Jersey:

Nothing can make a bunch of 8-year-old boys scream like a bunch of little girls like a 2-inch bug appearing to unexpectedly come to life when it’s lying in the street.

A good way to teach an unenthusiastic math student a practical application for multiplication is to ask them to figure out about how many cicadas are in our town (Here it’s more than 2 million.  Yuck.)

No offense, cicadas, but is there something you can do about those big ugly red eyes?  Maybe a little concealer, or a more flattering hairdo?

I think if I’d been underground for as long as these cicadas have been, I’d be a little annoyed that the weather has been so lousy.  Hot, then cold, then hot again, and so rainy.  It’s like going on vacation and having bad weather the whole time.

That’s about it, thanks.  See you in 17 years.

A 17-year cicada, or Magicicada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)