Going Buggy
Tuesday, Jun. 01, 2004, 9:37 a.m.

QUESTION: What's that buzzing sound?

WHAT I LEARNED: Be scared. Be very scared.

A cicada in the shirt is worth two in the bush - perhaps more. The dramatic effect of a cicada flying down a normal person's shirt is substantial. It's more compelling than one of those Animal Planet specials when it's in your kid's shirt and he is holding it in a little clump of material when he climbs into your car. And it's buzzing.

Why would he do that?

Because a desire not to strip off his shirt and run around the parking lot as an assortment of underpaid, overworked high school teachers trudged across the asphalt to their vehicles and a few hours of freedom from teenagers like him compelled him to be creative with his resources - in this case: a car, a mom, a shirt.

So with shirt a-buzzing, eyes a-bugging, and hearts a-beating, I followed my son's instruction to just pull over at the edge of the parking lot and wait for the teacher folk to depart. Eventually even the tardiest of these headed for home and we were able to get the shirt off with the bug still in it. The shirt was then waived out the car door while this persistent little cicada - perhaps taking a shining to my kid or his shirt - held on for dear life. Persistence was no match for panic and eventually the bug was history.

The cicada went flying off with new tales to tell his fellows of the great wide world.

My son and I rode home a little warier of things that go buzz in the innocuous safety of ordinary daylight.

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