Radiolab

They are pants. Or maybe we should call them Pants with Benefits. Some of you — especially parents of young teens — will find them totally inappropriate. The folks at Instructables.com find them totally silly, which is why they invented them.

If you live in Missouri, they've already gone.

But back East, cicadas are about to climb out of their little holes in the ground, wriggle out of their skins, like this ...

... so after 17 years of getting ready, they can now do the thing they hope, hope, hope to do — which is, if at all possible, make a baby.

You sit down, turn on the computer, up comes an image, could be anything, a cloud, a koala bear, a video. On the right side of the screen there are more images like it, or almost like it, so you click on one of those, just because ... because what? Because it's there? Because it's waiting? Because, for no conceivable reason, you suddenly have a yearning for balloon pictures? You don't plan this, you have no plan, but you keep going, gently pulled by the lure of "next."

If history proves correct, Magicicada Brood II will emerge this spring after living underground for 17 years.

In many places along the Eastern Seaboard — from North Carolina to Connecticut — the cicadas will fill the skies, breed and then quickly die. National Geographic points out that historically, this group, known as Brood II, has been so prolific that picking up their carcasses can sometimes feel like raking leaves in the fall.