Zombies and UFOs? No problem

What else will emerge from the ground this long, bleak pandemic winter of our discontent? This is a swarm of locusts in Kenya, east Africa, which has been seeing a locust plague in the past year. — AFP

THEY’RE not locusts, but they might as well be. Billions of beady-eyed cicadas digging their way out of the soil in 15 Eastern states of the US this spring – after 17 years of creepily tunnelling around underground – definitely feels like a biblical-type plague on the horizon. A plague on top of the plague we’re already in, that is.

The cicada, a 1.5-inch-long flying insect, has the longest developmental period of any insect in North America.