"The Cicadas are Coming!"

7-year-old Kimmy was the one who told me over dinner that the Cicadas were coming. Her cute face lit up: “It has um… orangy eyes and um, you know, clear wings, so it flies around. And it goes ‘chiiiiiiiii-chiiiiiiiiiiii’. Yup! Just like that!”

I had long forgotten about the existence of cicadas. While Kimmy was enthusiastically drawing one with crayon on the paper tablecloth, I searched hard in my memory and finally that “Chiiiiiii-Chiiiiii” sound zoomed-in an old, yellow-stained snapshot of the past:

I was about the same age as Kimmy, young and carefree. Walking in between my parents, each of my hands safely locked in their hands. On my left was my father, tall and handsome. And my mother was walking on my right side. Gently smiled, she could not have been more beautiful. It was an after-dinner walk in a mid-summer night. Neighbors were outside their apartments trying to catch some breeze. Some were playing chess and some were simply just sitting on a chair, cooling themselves with bamboo-made fans. My parents occasionally stopped to chat with friends and I would just hop around them, being happy, being silly, and being a child. While all these were happening, the cicadas were resting on the trees, making their “chiiii-chiiii” sound like a background serenade in a typical summer night.

“Chiiii-Chiiiii…” Kimmy was still making that airy but somewhat annoying sound. Her drawing turned out to be pretty good, although retained little resemblance of an actual cicada. Her mom signaled her to stop so she pouted, soon began to draw a tree for her little orange-eyed friend.

The Death of A Centipede

I just committed murder...

It appeared from nowhere and crawled quickly with its 60-some legs toward a hiding spot - the dark space behind my bulletin board.

This centipede was by far the largest I had ever seen. It was over 2 1/2 inches long, and its legs looked like fake eyelashes in extended-length. The three-seconds glimpse of this creature terrified me and I knew that it had to be killed in exchange for a peaceful night out of my own selfishness. As I lifted up the bulletin board, I couldn't help but to scream and scream. I hated the fact that I had to do it and I hated myself for being the weakling who feared this long-legged intruder. Four sheets of paper-towels in my hand, I pressed as hard as I could onto the wall, crushing its little body. Instantly, a wave of sadness hit me and I felt an urge to cry.

I wish that someone else was there besides me, someone who was brave enough to save this creature from being killed under my bare hands.

The Unfortunate Specie

Why do mosquitoes exist?

They do not benefit the world or the nature in any way that I can think of (for example, bees produce honey and some others help to spread flower seeds); unlike some insects who do not cause any harm but only to live in their own terms, vicious bites and transmitting disease are what they are famous for.

Mosquitoes are what I call the "mini-vampires". In order to generate batches of eggs, the female ones have to seek for blood meal. We the humans obviously are a good blood source for them. Of course, the poor little species are doing what they are made to do, and have absolutely no control over their own habitual. Just like the humans and any other type of living species, they do anything to live regardless how short their life cycle is.

Nevertheless, the "millions" of bites that I get from them are unforgivable. They sting you before you realize it; they get away with a full stomach and leave you a swollen bump that itches for days; above all, if any of them unfortunately dies under my palm, the dead little body always manages to make me feeling a second of guilt for killing such a small, helpless creature.

If Noah's Ark was a true story, he shouldn't have let the mosquitoes to sneak into the boat. It was a mistake... indeed...

Domestic Warfare

It all started when ants decided to invade my apartment over the weekend. Everything was carefully planned. First, they sent in a few "pawns" to investigate the apartment. I spotted one of them in the bathroom and terminated it without a question. There must be others that escaped my eyes. But they were there, perhaps hiding somewhere in the corners, watching the giant human being walking around in the room, and praying not to be spotted like their lost ones.

They waited and waited... Then, I left for the weekend. They knew it was the perfect time for the invasion. It could not be missed.

I returned from my trip two days later. Exhausted from the train ride, I was more than glad to be home. As I sat down and flipped open my laptop, a black shadow passed in front of my eyes so fast that it disappeared within the blink of eyes. "Shit.." I quickly grabbed some tissue paper, lifted up my laptop to hunt whatever that shadow was. What I found, was not one, but fifteen of them, hiding under my laptop!

Angry and disgusted, I was determined to kill every single ant on my desk. However, I underestimated them: they were Not easy to kill. Somehow, they managed to come back to life even though I used many ways to "finger-press" them with tissue papers! The "army" of ants... they put up such a good fight.

My desk was clear after 10 minutes. How did they get onto my desk...? And where were they coming from? All of the sudden, I gasped as my eyes starred at my bed: "What are those moving things...?!"

For the next hour, I stood by my bed, killing every ant I saw, one after another. There was no end to it - they just kept coming.

Unable to handle this all by myself, I called for rescue. Raf came in and quickly found the ant's entrance to my apartment. It was the window near the bed. They came in through cracks, slide down to my bed from the cord of my alarm clock, then got to my desk. Raf lifted up the alarm clock... there were too many underneath that I couldn't bring myself to take a second glance.

"This is gonna be a massacre!" Raf declared. He covered the "creatures" with some paper towel, followed by a series of heavy poundings. The rest, is not appropriate for me to describe.

We sealed the crack on the window, sprayed some Raid and set ant traps. That was the end of the war. It was brutal... indeed.

I had to terminate them. When I was young, the movie "Killer Ants" traumatized me; therefore, it was Not acceptable for a massive amount of them to intrude my apartment. I spent my night at my cousin's. Now that I'm back here, writing this post in my bed, I keep being alert to any moving objects in the room and terrified that they might crawl all over me. Ants, they might return for revenge. But for the time being, Raid will keep them out; and the possible return of the ants will haunt me during my sleeps.