THIRTEEN WITH DISASTER...

by Tallulah Lastname, Company Clerk:

T-Bone and Cotton are in Nashville, Tennessee. They were briefly joined by an additional hand-picked team of rag-tag Misanthropes, sent by Madame X to aid in the carrying out of yet another offshoot errand. The extra manpower was dispatched once it was learned that T-Bone's mission in the Music City coincided with the emergence of Brood XIX; a loud-buzzing swarm of cicadas that rises up by the millions out of the ground every thirteen years.

(Brood XIX in action)

Also known as the Great Southern Brood, this is the largest brood of thirteen-year cicadas, they're out in record numbers this year. The air is lousy with them. After over a decade of lying in wait as underground grubs, they have finally emerged; taking to the sky in the desperate hopes of humping and laying eggs in these last few days of their lives.

An overnight accumulation of dead bugs under T-Bone's
porch light (photo by T-Bone)

The streets are littered with big dead bugs. They're flying into people's faces, and bumping feverishly into streetlights all night. Cicadas are dropping dead, mid-flight, or raining down from the trees like autumn leaves, and the Misanthropes are collecting as many of the carcasses as they can.

Just as was the case with the Company's collection of ball moss in Austin, many of the local are thankful for Misanthropes ridding their properties of this perceived eye-sore, going so far as to make a financial contribution to the effort.

(photo by Reverend Aitor)

But all this raking up of expired insects is motivated by more than some sense of civic duty. The cicadas are being boxed up and shipped back to the Company's MVSEVM.

Already, there are five kilos of cicadas are on their way to Toronto, and the Nashville expedition is still gathering even more more.Madame X, the MVSEVM's curator, has plans for this bounty of specimens. Big plans.

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