After spending 17 years relaxing underground, billions of cicadas have emerged from the earth to mate and inundated the country with their signature cacophony of alienlike wails, wreaking havoc along the way. Large parts of the eastern U.S. have been disrupted by male cicadas singing up a storm, ruining alfresco gathering plans, and, in one instance in Cincinnati, flying through a window to hit a driver in the face, causing him to veer off and hit a utility pole.
Now, they’ve even come for the commander-in-chief.
On Tuesday, a swarm of the horny bugs grounded a White House press charter plane for hours, pushing the departure from 9 p.m. Tuesday night until past 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. Somehow, the cicadas clogged the plane’s engines, the New York Times reports. The plane was swapped out, but the mischief did not stop.
One of the loud, pesky critters crept up on Biden’s neck as he prepared to board a flight at Joint Base Andrews to Europe. “Watch out for the cicadas,” Biden told reporters after swatting one way. “I just got one — it got me.”
