By Matt Frei BBC Washington correspondent

In his latest column for BBC News Online, Matt Frei talks about the invasion of the 17-year cicadas in Washington and the swarm of bad news for President Bush.

May has been the month of Brood X.

'My daughter even let them crawl up her arm'

First there was the anticipation. At my daughter's church school they were circulating letters on how to calm your children about these red-eyed creatures from the deep.

There were "get-to-know-you" cicada sessions in school.

By the time they emerged, four-year-old Amelia had received so much cicada therapy that she was happy to pick them up, place them on her cheeks and let them crawl up her arm.

A bit too cosy for my taste!

My son George, who goes to the British School, which presumably takes a more stiff upper lip approach to the exuberance of nature, was less schooled in these matters and thus more suspicious.

Two-year-old Lotte - no Brood X therapy whatsoever- was so petrified she hardly went outdoors.

"They will eat me!" she declared and that was that.

"Don't worry, darling, they won't eat YOU. Some people eat THEM!" I tried to reassure her.

She looked at me as if I was some human incarnation of Brood X and became even more afraid.

In my own case, nothing quite prepared me for the permanent crunching sensation under your feet; the omnipresence of these creatures, worthy of a Hitchcock film; the constant drone of their beating wings, which sounds like a cake mixer in the sky; their lousy flying technique, which reminds me of Singapore drivers; and of course their over-arching tragedy.

Imagine spending 17 long years underground in feverish anticipation of one week of clumsy flying and clumsier sex, only to die again.

And what's with the 17 YEARS!?

Swarm of bad news

I am still waiting for the day when the cicadas swarm around the windows of the Oval Office.

But alas the White House seems to have been spared the worst of this benign biblical plague.

Bush has dealt with a swarm of bad headlines. He might prefer cicadas.

This is just as well since it is dealing with its own swarm - of bad news.

Who would have thought a year ago that Iraq would turn out to be the Achilles' heel of this administration, that the economy would be booming, but no one would notice, and that the biggest single gripe of the American people would be the rocketing prices at the gas pump.

An irony as sweet as the Basra "sweet, light" crude!

This oil, essential as it is for making petrol, is now not flowing in sufficient quantities through US refineries due to a number of clinically precise terror attacks on a very important pipeline in Iraq.

I never thought that this war was about oil.

But can you imagine the long faces at Thanksgiving dinner on the Bush ranch if this petro-phile administration ends up being toppled by the $50-barrel!