I had a near death experience today somewhere on I-69 Northbound out of Indianapolis, Indiana.
How you ask? Near death, I must be exaggerating? I am not…

No deer jumping in front of my rental car, no drunk drivers cut me off. Not an errant grandma crossing into my lane from a seizer, not a remnant of a comet falling to earth. No, nothing sexy like those random but sure fire ways to get dead happened. Rather a fucking bug almost took me out. A cicada or locust maybe. Surly it was sent straight up from hell itself to launch itself unknown to me straight out from between the dashboard and windshield as I was mindlessly going 75 MPH with a cup of coffee in my left hand and my righthand guiding me down the interstate. Instantly aware of the buzzing and clicking this pissed off ball of exoskeleton and wings was making as it bounced around the car, hitting me in the head a few times and once (so it seemed) wanting to enter my skull thru my ears.

Maybe it was fate, luck, skill and the pure and utter grace of God I did not kill anyone as I swerved, then hit the brakes and deftly maneuvered to the shoulder of the road, all while trying to swat said bug, set my coffee down and roll down the windows. The windows couldn't go down fast enough. I can only imagine the passers by that saw me ungracefully exiting the car muttering "mother fucker, holy shit" and a slew of other expletives. Now my new guest in the car, as I was trying to get it out decided that it wanted to go back into it's original hiding spot, back in the dash it went. Locust are like cats- you can call them all day long but they are not coming until their ready to do so. After a few minutes of contemplating to rip the dashboard out of this rental car, along with me beating the dash (smashing) forcefully trying to slay this mighty cicada failed miserably, I got back in the car. Defeated.

Back on the road, windows down and at the ready for "it" to appear again, it did just that. However this time it was 2 of them. One flew right out the window (good riddance) and the other swarmed around the car again and this time went into the defroster vents on the dashboard. Now it's my turn to inflict pain, I cranked up the heat to the weld setting on the defroster and watched for it to stagger out of the vent hopefully with heatstroke so I could resuscitate it with my shoe. I hate bugs! It never did appear again, dead- I hoped but it's probably laying in wait for the next person to scare the ever loving shit out of. No matter what you think, a cicada launching out of your dashboard unexpectedly WILL bring out the worst of your driving skills.

Fast forward 38 more miles, I pulled into the local National Car Rental place and swapped cars. I had no desire to play this game for another 300 miles, lest I get killed over a stupid bug. Did I mention, I hate bugs.