A Brush With Death

Tonight when we let the cats outside, we heard them going crazy by the door. I opened the door to see what all of the scratching and banging was about and I saw that Cal had pounced on some kind of bug. A very large, very, very loud bug. Before I could stick my foot in his face (the preferred method of cat repellent in the manor, with 76% effectiveness) he scooted into the kitchen and deposited his treasure on his food bowl - a whirring, screeching, devilish, fat and ugly cicada. At first I thought it was a locust, but as you'll read here cicadas are often misidentified as locusts in North America.

Cicada, locust, whatever. All I know is disgusting, loud, and loose in our kitchen. Every time I got within 3 feet of it, it would screech and whir and start flying around like crazy. I'm not usually scared of bugs, but the sound this one makes activates the same nerve endings that make you scream if someone jumps out at you from a closet yelling, "Christmas Eve Gift!"(right, Matt?:) Only this was infinitely less fun than Christmas Eve shenanigans. It would whir and screech, I would scream and run away and collapse on the bed laughing.

James eventually caged it under the sink drainer and ran hot water on it for about 15 minutes. After some insecticide, liberal drowning, and more than a few death rattles, he had subdued the creepy thing enough to pick it up with a paper towel and flush it down the toilet. It was about that time when I found this sound file of a cicada online. I thought he saw what I was up to - but I pressed play, and James yelled, "It's screeching in the toilet! Go flush it!...What is that - oh turn that off! Turn that OFF! Don't ever play that again!!"

Ah, life.