Postscript

I hate to keep harping on this. I really do. I'm as sick of it as you are, but I do believe this little incident is worth mentioning.

I'm in my boss's office, discussing the fine distinctions between translators and interpreters, when he cocks his head over to the window and asks me a question.

I am often hard of hearing despite by nubile young age (I don't know, maybe all the inbreeding in my family finally caught up?). So I often pretend I know what people are saying when they're not. So when my boss tilts his head window-ward and says, "Did you see my -------- collection?" I didn't know he was saying cicada because the way he pronounces it, it rhymes with ricotta.

Naive and curious, I bend over his windowsill to see his ricotta collection, only to be greeted by a ziploc bag crawling with LIVE CICADAS. Which he is MAILING to his father. I cannot think of many things worse than opening a package to find cicadas inside, with the possible exception of the time I opened up a CD I had ordered only to find an erroneously delivered Mandy Moore album instead. Back when she was blonde. And the album was called Candy.

My boss was delighted to have grossed out a girl, which is clearly something that never fades with age. Hair can be gone, butt can be saggy, eyesight can be shot, viagra can be useless, but you boys will still get a raspy cackle out of dropping a beetle down some poor granny's muu-muu. This is a terrible trait that will be weeded out of your genes by natural selection once we girls band together and rise up.

...and with that I conclude, barring any future horrors, my last post about those bugs, because seriously it's getting tired.