Cooper Colby ‘29
Definitely Not a Lanternfly
Picture a day when you walked across campus. As your foot hits the pavement, a big sexy bug that your eye missed catapults itself into the air and flutters its alluring wings, landing gracefully out of your path. As if its life’s purpose is to brighten your day, these gorgeous crawlies dazzle Holy Cross every day, but no one loves them.
You may have heard that the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is an “invasive species”, but this is just a tall tale, for if we… I mean they were invasive, then how come there are more of them here than you? Lanternflies outnumber humans 2:1, as noted by Professor Elur Sgub of the Biology department.
“Many of my colleagues are advising students to kill lanternflies, but I see this as a threat to reality as we know it,” warns Professor Sgub, who received her PhD from Hemiptera University of Texas in 1989. “If more people got to know these national treasures, you’d see they’re not so bad. In fact, we are the bad ones.”
In this week’s Philosophy department meeting, every professor admitted that killing the lanternflies is a “condemnable moral wrong,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Do you know how hard life is? Have you ever had to pop out 50 eggs at a time? Would you kill your bug brethren if you knew your loved ones had an average lifespan of one year?
Last Monday, I was walking up the library steps with my cousin Glubblenub to enrich ourselves in literature. Out of nowhere, a nasty, smelly human with a pointed, ratlike face stomped his foot with a thunderous echo, crunching through Glubblenub’s wings. The malefactor’s mouth twisted into an evil grin as he shuffled away, cackling softly. We could not bury the body, for the damage was too severe. We can never bury the bodies….
To all the humans reading this, I have one message for you about how to treat your fellow earthlings: “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none”. This quote was dramatically whispered by Christopher Nolan, who is often called “the lanternfly guardian of the West” by fans, while he wept over the carnage of lanternflies found outside his office after filming. Anything humans can do, so can a lanternfly. We can play music, recite poetry, build rockets, and most importantly: ruin crops with no local predators to stop us. Humans and L. delicatula are similar on a fundamental level beyond metaphysical comprehension, and this unity in our shared life force means we have equal ownership over campus.
P.S. STOP SQUISHING US!!!!!!!
P.P.S. Please 🙂
Featured image courtesy of Connecticut Connect
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