Yaaaaaaawn. Just another boring day in Middletown, Connecticut. Parents pull their cars up to WestCo, packing up mini-fridges and bedding as frosh frantically try to hide their drug paraphernalia. A chalked message is half washed away; only the word “bourgeois” is still legible. Red solo cups litter the sidewalk like insect corpses. But… suddenly… a noise breaks the silence on Andrus Field. bzzz. It grows louder. BZZZ. And that’s when… Brood II arrives.
What is Brood II, you ask? Brood II is the 17-year periodical magicicada clutch that will emerge this spring. Every 17 years, once the soil temperature at eight inches deep hits 64 degrees, the cicadas that have been gestating underground crawl to earth’s surface to reproduce. And then they die. And there are a lot of them. Billions of cicadas!
Nobody is exactly sure when this extremely disgusting and thrilling plague will hit — experts are estimating late May to early June in the Middletown area. With any luck, Brood II will seek fresh air in the days leading up to Reunion & Commencement (May 26th).
