Jun 11, 2021 4 min read

As we all know, the world has been spinning all wobbily this past year or so. We can blame the global pandemic for most of the trouble, but not all of it.

There are the cicadas, thousands of which screwed with press plane covering President Joe Biden. And then one broke off from the brood to wait for the president outside Air Force One. The meme of him swatting the bug away from his neck could end up being the “Fly landing on Mike Pence’s head” of the new administration.

There are no cicadas in my life – Brood X bypassed much of Southwestern Pennsylvania – but there are other weird natural events happening around me, and they are worth noting here.

Something is making my car sticky. I don’t mean sticky inside, like what you’d find on the steering wheel after eating a jelly donut. This is on the outside.

I opened the door to get in the other day and when I pulled my hand away, it felt like I’d been playing in pancake syrup. Something sappy has encased my Subaru. Because the car is white, the mystery substance appears as pale gold in color – so pale, in fact, that in certain sunlight my car appears to be glossy and wet. But this is not water. It’s some diabolical substance that the windshield wipers don’t quite erase.

This would require a trip through the car wash, an errand that had to begin with removing the bike rack from the hitch. Not easily done. I got grease on my hand and then pinched my thumb.

Riding through the amusement-park Tunnel of Suds was reassuring. Certainly all those flapping ribbons would make easy work of the sticky goo. And if not the ribbons, then the college kids at the exit would remove the rest of it with their towels.

Wrong.

The sticky stuff was not only not removed, somehow the combination of soap and hot water emboldened the goo, making it even stickier.

My car was now a gigantic, Subaru-shaped lint roller. As I drove home, every leaf, bug, twig and dust particle I passed attached itself to my car. Back at home in the driveway, the car collected thousands of those little brown stringy seed things the trees are dropping.

What were these things that tarred and feathered my car?

Turns out they are catkins, tassel-like objects that drop from oak trees. They are the male flowers that float to the ground to shed pollen that is then carried by the wind to female flowers. In other words, they are where acorns come from.

My research didn’t turn up any news about the catkins causing sticky residue, but considering the oak tress and the carpet of catkins I have on my property – not to mention stuck to my car-I guess I’ll blame them for the stickiness. The catkins also explain why my eyes have been itchy the past week or so.

You’re not supposed to rake them, because that just launches the pollen into the air. A gigantic sweeper would do the trick, but where do you get one of those?

As for the sticky car, it has a good, hard hand scrubbing in its future. I have not personally washed a car since a high school band fundraiser, so I’m not exactly looking forward to it. I should probably wait until after the catkins have stopped falling. Until then, I’ll be driving around in a bug magnet.

It’s a good thing the cicadas aren’t in my path.