US politics are currently preoccupied with many important issues.
The threat from Russia and China, cooperation within NATO, the infrastructure package - and cicadas.
Cicadas?
Yes, cicadas.
The red-eyed, winged insects have conquered the east coast and parts of the American Midwest.
In the capital Washington DC, they have been a real nuisance for a few weeks now - and provide plenty of talking point.
A stroll through the capital can be an interesting experience or a torture, depending on your taste.
The cicadas sit by the thousands in the trees and hum loudly to themselves.
They lie on sidewalks, crawl into houses and populate front gardens.
The garden of the White House is also teeming with small insects.
The special thing about the animals: The cicada invasion in this mass is repeated in Washington and the surrounding area exactly every 17 years.
That is how long the cicadas live as nymphs in the ground.
Punctually after 17 years, billions of them then crawl to the surface of the earth to mate.
Researchers have christened the phenomenon Brut X.
Sometimes so many of the critters fly through the air that they can even be seen on the weather radar.
"They must be the cicadas," the National Weather Service wrote on Twitter when a strange cloud suddenly appeared on its screens over Washington on a fine day in June.
The Washington Post suggested that other insect species may have been involved in the phenomenon.
Cicadas in Congress
The critters don't stop at the hallowed halls of the US Congress either.
Manu Raju, CNN's chief correspondent, was recently hit by several cicadas there.
One crawled under his shirt collar as he was about to go on the air.
Cursing, he tried to get rid of the cicada, which he finally succeeded in doing.
A second cicada crawled out of his pocket.
Even the president is not safe from the little pests.
When Joe Biden was about to leave for the G7 summit last week, one of the animals crawled up his neck.
“Beware of the cicadas.
I just had one - it got me, ”Biden warned reporters in attendance.
Fortunately, the insects are basically harmless.
As Matt Kasson of West Virginia University reports, they cannot sting or bite.
In general, they are also not a threat to the garden or agriculture.
Most of the time, they're just annoying.
For example airlines: Together with President Biden, an extra plane from Delta Air Lines was supposed to take off for the summit in Europe.
Journalists were on board who wanted to report on Biden's first trip abroad.
However, there was a delay of more than six hours after cicadas occupied the aircraft's auxiliary power unit.
Delta had to get a new plane.
The insects are not always pleasant in car traffic either.
A man recently hit a post in his car.
The reason?
A cicada had flown into his face through the open window.
Fortunately, the man is fine, as the police reported.
Meanwhile, in Washington and the surrounding area, many residents are making fun of the plague.
A shop sells cicada ice cream, the vanilla and cranberry creation looks like an oversized insect.
And sometimes the critters actually end up on the plate.
Recipes for cicada cookies, cicada pizza and cicada salad are circulating on the internet.
Connoisseurs report that grilled the cicadas taste like fresh scampi.
However, the insects are particularly popular with dogs and cats.
They are among their natural enemies and are said to be responsible for thousands of deaths in Brut X in the fine suburbs of the capital.
Some already give their four-legged friends muzzles so that they don't eat too many of the small animals.
Cicadas in the election campaign
It is not exactly clear why the cicadas appear exactly every 17 years.
During the last onslaught in 2004, George W. Bush was President.
At that time, too, the cicadas were involved in the political process, they even appeared in the election campaign.
The Republicans ran a commercial in which a cicada transformed into John Kerry, the then Democratic challenger to Bush.
Another 17 years earlier, Ronald Reagan was president.
He, too, compared his political opponents to the red-eyed insects.
In a speech on financial policy, the Republican accused the Democrats of wanting to put too much money into state welfare programs: "I'm afraid that the big spenders will hatch like the cicadas and then overrun Congress."
The cicada phenomenon has been handed down as early as 1902, when the then President Theodor Roosevelt gave a speech at the Arlington military cemetery.
While he was defending US foreign policy in the Philippines, he was almost drowned out by a swarm of cicadas.
His biographer Edmund Morris wrote of an outright demonstration against the President: "Invisible choruses of cicadas hummed as an antithesis to [Roosevelt's] voice."
The good news for everyone in Washington: The Cicadas of Brood X will be gone very soon.
The adult animals only live four to six weeks on the earth's surface.
After mating, little nymphs will hatch from their eggs in the trees, fall to the ground and disappear underground for 17 years.
In these days they are already starting to disappear.
The next invasion is expected to take place in 2038. Let's see who is then president.
