Just when we think we’ve got a handle on covid, the media’s put out another scare – babesiosis. Not a fear of babies. This infection is spread by ticks, much like Lyme disease.

Like everything we’ve read and heard over the past year, this news was more “the sky is falling” reporting even though the disease is rare and most likely to happen in the northern woods.

Fear sells, and you don’t have to look far to find something to give you nightmares.

Billions of Brood X cicadas – that’s the number CNN is using – are swarming this summer after a 17-year hibernation. Videos show these bugs swarming over trees and bushes, much like locusts from the days of Moses.

Later in the broadcast, we learn they’re not dangerous but that’s secondary to words like “swarming” and “emergence.” The way the reporters describe the scene, the ground’s going to open up and armies of bugs will emerge like a tornado and strip the land of all vegetation.

Here in the South, we already have plenty to fear.

Let’s start with alligators in the streets.

Social media is filled with photos of alligators roaming neighborhoods.

Not swamps.

Not rivers.

The neighborhoods where our children ride their bikes.

They want us to picture giant alligators swallowing pets, possums and small cars.

Gators in the streets are rare, but that doesn’t stop us from getting the heebie-jeebies.

The real fear comes from things that are hard to spot and more common.

Like snakes.

The South isn’t like Ireland where there aren’t any snakes. Here in our humid land, water moccasins, copperheads and puff adders are in abundance.

According to fear mongers, these deadly snakes are at least 12 feet long and they’ll eat what the roaming alligators leave behind.

We have flying cockroaches. These aren’t bugs the size of a dime. No these brownish cockroaches that seem to be the size of your shoe are like flying kamikaze pilots when they come at you in the dark.

Once you see a cockroach dive bombing your head, all reason leaves your brain and you’re running for the house, vaulting over any alligators or snakes lurking in the back yard.

There’s spiders. Some people have an innate fear of these arachnids, but spiders aren’t on my list of fears.

If I see one, it’s an easy squash and into the trash. But when I saw a video of a spider giving birth to about a zillion baby spiders on someone’s living room wall, I had nightmares for a week.

Right now, we’re battling mosquitoes. After a few torrential rainstorms, the mosquitoes hatched in numbers that would equal the population of Miami. I cracked opened the door to let our dog out, and a dozen flew in.

We had another recent rainstorm that dumped more rain and that means in another week, just as this first wave of mosquitoes was waning, the second wave is coming.

I have a feeling they’ll be super androids compared to the bugs we had last week.

The South is also host to the most vicious of all insects and pests – the fire ant. Nothing can kill them. They survived 9-degree temperatures back in February, 100-degree Texas summers and massive flooding.

In fact, when the water rises, they group together to find a big stick and float their whole mound to higher ground.

I haven’t even mentioned web caterpillars in the trees that look like a nightmare from the “Body Snatchers’ movies.

There’s also stinging caterpillars that drop on your head if you sit underneath a tree, looking for shade.

So cover your heads, layer on the bug spray and wear long sleeves. From babesiosis to bugs, we’re in for an itchy, icky summer.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.