The Blooming Bug

A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, overlaid on itself

It was a spring thing on Earth that was a beautiful failure of containment of an alien, but in the end, no harm, no foul.

The Tuitirian Cicada is called “the Blooming Bug” … you would think that it is a spring flower budding right out of the ground in April, and, they have been eaten as such on their homeworld at the pupa stage of their development – as a vegetable! Supposedly, they taste like onions with a sorrel kick, but …

“Too much oxalic acid,” Aunt Almira said. “They are edible like rhubarb stems are if properly prepared, and they have the color scheme to make you think that – but still, they are a bit much for human constitution.”

“They are rhubarb that floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee,” said Uncle Benjamin, and just cracked Aunt Almira up while others who knew nothing about 20th century boxing and African American culture had no idea of the reference!

The Tuitirian Cicada does fit between vegetable and animal in earth terms, being closer to a vegetable … but at some point, they do take off, fly, mate, and burrow back into the soil for about five years before hatching in a later spring. They made it to Earth in some potting soil, and because they are so beautiful, the first people to see them hatching to the surface thought they were a bonus plant. Then came a time period in which everyone in that area was trying to figure out who stole their plants one moonlight night, only to at last observe with the last flight nights in May that Tuitirian Cicadas fly off on their own. But then, the people responsible for containing aliens were looking for them on the surface of the ground, and, being a month behind, were too late.

Tuitirian Cicadas have naturalized along the West Coast of the Americas, from British Columbia to Chile – the climate here is similar to their homeworld, although Earth's yellow sun is a little gentler than their yellow-white home star, Tuitir. Because of this, Earth's representatives take five years to mature instead of three years … so, every fifth spring, one can see them flipping and flapping through the skies of San Francisco like butterflies the size of of rhubarb leaves – and yes, if you handle one roughly, it will sting you with concentrated oxalic acid.

“Well,” I said, “I hate that we are all here in San Francisco because of a court martial around the destruction of the Farragut, but if an admiral [Uncle Benjamin] and two captains [Aunt Almira and me] have to be here on these circumstances, this was the spring of wonders for it.”

“Oh, definitely,” Uncle Benjamin said, “and there are going to be many wonderful lifeforms to see, although mostly better in hand than Tuitirian Cicadas, this spring!”