Have you ever had the pleasure of listening to thousands, if not even hundreds of thousands, Cicadas? Have you even seen one? Well...

I might be an animal lover but I despise bugs. The little creepy crawlies and the sounds they make. When I first found out that not only one type of Cicada's are coming out but rather two, I wanted to leave the state, not just the house, which we are renovating at the moment. They arrived quietly. You could see more and more holes in the ground every time you walked outside. Then their empty shells stuck to the house, cars, tires, under certain trees.

We have four large trees in our yard, about fifty years old and these weird creatures cover them all in their entirety. Their little empty yet ugly shells cover the ground and with each day the noise is growing louder. At some point their sounds grew so high that you couldn't even stand outside for too long without the fear of losing your hearing. The male call to mate, it is said.

This is not the first time I've seen these creatures, but never this many. When I did see them, no one told us what they were and they look a bit creepy so I feared and hated them. Now, I try to simply shoo them away or pick them out of the water they're halfway drowning in. Harmless, but the number are insane.

When I first went to Chicago back in my Flight Attendant days, I encountered what they called Love Bugs. Now they were ugly. They could have been Cicadas for all I know but they covered the entire airport and I couldn't understand what was so lovable about them. Another time in San Antonio I get to experience the ugliness of those black crickets blanketing anything that was lit up in the evenings. Same thing happened in Jacksonville, Florida.

Mind you, not of these creatures are poisonous nor dangerous. They're just ugly or weird looking, but if you have a fear of bugs, your brain doesn't comprehend those minor details.

All in all, a few more weeks and these noisy critters will be back under the ground hibernating. They predict the next double Cicada invasion in 2076, which would put me in my mid 90's, so I doubt I'll be around for that, but who knows. Their loud voices just might wake me up from my dead sleep.

'Til next time!