I'm torturing, maiming, and killing cicadas

...and I have to admit I've willingly and wantonly revealed a dark side of my humanity, all in defense of plants, trees, and shrubs. I've long-been a midnight slug killer, known to wipe out entire slug families in a single fall of my 13-size foot.

My cicada hatred has been evident and rising for over a month now, nearly to the day that I foolishly proclaimed the funny-looking emergents to be god's gentle little creatures; guileless and content to just sit and watch their new, confusing world go by.

That was before their colonization of every bush, tree, and plant they could crawl up and sit upon, no matter if it bent, broke, or failed to produce new shoots under their weight. Little black marks on the new black-eyed susan shoots; blackening marks on the roses, phlox, and every plant they clung to; stunted leaves on the slow-emerging, 20-foot Chinese snowball viburnum, tops of the oak-leaf hydrangeas stripped of new growth; tops of the Japanese maple bared; entire branches of the rose-of-sharons dying back, juvenile dogwoods weighted to the ground and yellowing.

But it's the lilac by the house that's the most popular love-shack at the lower levels of the garden. It's right by the lean-to greenhouse I dug into the side of the house, and they will hiss and wail at me as I walk by now. Too much! I have a broom nearby which clears the crag of a bush for about 15 minutes with a few good wacks to the branches.

I just cleared them off again, and there was an immediate uproar from the bank of oak-leaf hydrangeas behind me. I marched right up to the bushes and stood there glaring with my hands on hips, and, by god, they quieted down... until I went inside.

I don't know if this battle is truly necessary, or even feasible, given their numbers, but I'm now a dedicated cicada killer, a particularly vicious and vengeful one with not much mercy left in me. God help her bug-eyed, little creatures, because I can't be counted on anymore.