On more cynical days,
I struggle to find much
difference between us
and the cicada broods-
the ones that wait hundreds
of years to emerge. The
difference, perhaps, is
the time it takes to wake.
Are we asleep for millions
of years before hatching
into consciousness? We
enter a world that wants
us dead, everywhere circled
by killer wasps. Females
find their prey in trees, and
captures them in flight, para
lyzing them with a venomous
sting. She carries them back
to her underground nest,
where the paralyzed prey
will remain alive while
the wasp larvae feed. The
males just have a pseudo
stinger on their abdo
men-they have no real sting