The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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The other day I heard a New Yawk chef rhapsodically praising battered fried cicadas. Crispy, subtle tongue tones, environmentally woke. He could scarcely contain his newfound enthusiasm and now that we’re about to experience cicadageddon with a double hatch on the east coast, well, what better time to introduce a new menu item? Sure, he said, some folks have a natural aversion to the alien-looking critter, but, he said, we eat lobsters and shrimp, fellow arthropods and consider them exquisite delicacies. As a Dungeness crab connoisseur myself, I couldn’t agree more.

But … we have plenty of guests who wouldn’t anymore stick a morsel of claw meat in their face than they would a spider, another fellow arthropod, I don’t care how much seasoning or beer batter you fry them with, just not gonna do it. Too creepy, too disgusting. Give them a pink slime hamburger any day, greasier the better, the meat aged to just shy of putrefaction. McDonalds sells em by the billions.

Course I got plenty of friends who won’t eat most vegetables. Couldn’t get them to eat a Brussell sprout without threatening them with a gun. And some who eschew fruit, forget chewing on an apple. But something with 20 additives, you bet, the sweeter and saltier and fattier the better. There’s just no accounting for taste. Kinda makes you wonder why half of us are obese and diabetic.

I’m betting those cicada crisps are actually tasty, plus high in protein, all natural, no GMO’s, no transfats and gluten and nut free. If General Mills or Frito Lay could figure out a way to rebrand these insects, something more appetizing than Crispy Cooties, you know, more on the line of Nature’s Nuggets, they’d have a shot at cornering the market for bugs. But you and I know they wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. Add the salt and xanthan gum, monosodium glutamate, plenty of artificial coloring, high fructose corn sugar and enough preservatives to keep it all fresh for a decade, package it in a Styrofoam box, advertise it on kids’ tv programs then sit back and watch the profits roll in. Those cicadas are gonna wish they’d stayed hibernated another 17 years.

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