Tuesday night, me and Chip headed upstairs to bed about 11:00 pm and left Harry at the kitchen table eating some late night leftovers as he is inclined to do. I got all tucked in and was playing a few games of Words with Friends as I am inclined to do.
All of the sudden, I hear Harry barreling up the stairs and he busts through my bedroom door and says "Mom, someone is knocking on the back door!" I said "Who?" He said "I DON'T KNOW - I DIDN'T LOOK, I JUST BOLTED UPSTAIRS!"
Well, what is there to do, but get up and go see who is at the backdoor? I assume if it is a bad guy they wouldn't be knocking. So, I head downstairs with my two six foot boys behind me. I don't see or hear anything at the back door so I turn on the patio light. I still don't see anything. I open the door to peek my head out and I'll be damned if a giant cicada doesn't buzz by my legs, fly into the kitchen and start doing that loud spinning thing on the kitchen floor. All three of us go berserk - running, screaming, jumping, whatever else you do when a cicada is in your house! It dawns on Harry that it wasn't a knock, but a giant bug running into the glass. UGH!
We finally gather our wits about us and start creeping around looking for the cicada. We creep into the kitchen, looking under cabinets, on top of cabinets, behind things, under things. Nothing. Finally, we get a little braver and start making a little more noise to see if we can stir it up and figure out where it is. Not sure what we hit, but stirs it up and that loud sound returns and it runs us all out of the kitchen again.
Oh brother. Now what? How are we going to get it out of the house?
Harry suggests burning the house to the ground. He is not a fan of any bug, much less this giant, loud one.
Chip says there is no way he can sleep in the house with that thing on the loose. He gets brave and starts really looking hard for it.
Harry and I are waiting in the den for either screams of victory from Chip for locating the cicada or screams of terror that the cicada has landed on his back. While we wait Harry says to me "I think I would rather a deranged lunatic that escaped from an insane asylum have come through that door with an axe in his hand instead of that bug." His fear of the bugs is real.
Chip looks high and low for nearly an hour and there is no cicada anywhere. I convince them both to go to bed and assure them the bug will not fly upstairs while they sleep. They reluctantly agree - but probably slept with one eye open and towels crammed in the crack under their door.
Come morning, the first thing I think of as I am heading down the stairs is "Wonder how long it is going to take to find that bug?" It did not take long!
I was making my coffee and putting some dishes into the dishwasher, when I moved a pan in the sink and spotted the cicada in the sink on mesh strainer. I freaked out because a) I was so close to it b) it was huge. I was so afraid it was going to start flying and making that awful racket and I was going to have beat myself to death if it got in my hair!
I screamed for reinforcements to come downstairs and with Chip's help, I managed to cover it with a Tupperware bowl, lift up the strainer to trap him and throw the whole shooting match out in the backyard. The cicada took off flying as soon as the strainer and Tupperware separated in the air and he was over the fence before they hit the grass. Whew!
What a fiasco! There has been a lot of screaming over here in the last few days. Wonder if the neighbors are starting to wonder what the heck kind of operation we are running?
Lesson learned - DO NOT open the door when a cicada comes knocking! They are terrible house guests.
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