DAZE WORK: Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug

Something’s been bugging me lately, and if you said cicadas, you are so right.

Oh sure, insects have been pests many times throughout my life.

Those 30,000 bees in the wall of my basement on Hilltop Lane? Talk about a buzz. And those yellow jackets that were so very unhappy when I mowed over their in-ground nest with my Dixie Chopper.

And man, do I remember battling mosquitoes the size of sparrows on a Wisconsin lake one evening when I was about 12. They were so bad my dad even decided he’d had enough fishing, and believe you me, nothing much could keep that man from fishing ‘til the sun came up.

Let me preface my bug rant by saying I wasn’t initially aggravated by the swarms of cicadas that have descended upon my neighborhood in recent weeks.

In fact, I found it interesting to see a discarded exoskeleton or two laying on the back steps when I left for work each day. Or seeing the side of the neighbor’s garage covered in those carcasses.

In the early days of the onslaught, I kept waiting for the humming chirp the cicadas were supposed to provide as background music.

Then one night a couple weeks back, Mother Nature called, and as I left my bedroom all I could hear was a low hum droning on.

“What’s my furnace doing running when it’s like 70 degrees out?” I initially wondered, making my way down the hall.

As I shuffled into the utility room, the hum was noticeably louder and seemed to be coming from the outside. I opened the back door to the harsh reality that a million cicadas were trying to serenade me to sleep.

Wondering whether or not they’d applied for a city noise waiver, I nonetheless closed the door and went back to sleep.

One of the last times these buggers came out was when my kids were little and we lived out on Saddle Cub Road. My math tells me that’s 34 years -- two generations of cicadas -- ago.

Fishing buddy Ron and I were intrigued enough then to pluck a few cicadas off the trees and bushes before heading down to Oakalla Lake where the big bluegills and bass must have thought Marvin’s was delivering to the pond and gobbled the buzzing bait up like there was no tomorrow.

Oddly that fishing trip coincided with us experiencing a minor earthquake in an aluminum boat, bouncing up and down and slapping the water. Truly bizarre. But then again we’ve had cicadas and a small earthquake again this time.

Nope, the cicadas hadn’t really bothered me much this year until they went into their kamikaze phase and started launching themselves at my Jeep as I drove along. Several crashed into the windshield. One landed on the dashboard, wedging itself firmly between the glass and the dash, where it remains stuck and petrified.

Another buzzed me inside like I was crowding the plate on Nolan Ryan. He careened off my cheek, went into crash mode and ended up spinning in the bag of groceries on the passenger’s seat. If it weren’t for the peanut M&Ms in that Kroger bag I might have pitched the whole thing out.

Now, of course, the cicadas have entered a new phase, stripping small branches with three or four leaves attached from my big oak tree. My yard is full of those branches and leaves. Like green litter.

Turns out that after they’ve found a tree or shrub to land on, the cicadas will mate and lay eggs at the end of the branches. From the looks of my front yard there’s been a whole lotta mating going on. Seventeen years? More like the 17-year itch.

Experts say the newly hatched cicadas chew through the tips of the branches, causing them to fall off, carrying the young insects back down to the soil where they will dig in and spend the next 17 years waiting for the cycle to start all over again.

As I nestled into bed, I didn’t hear any more humming the other night. It’s finally over, I thought to myself.

Then a flickering in the corner of the bedroom caught my eye. It flickered again and I squinted to see a lightning bug (or firefly if you prefer) clinging to my ceiling.

Here we go again, I thought. But at least I don’t have to listen to him sing me to sleep.