Kansas Reporter 'Bugged' by Swarming Cicadas
"It was quite an experience," Katya Leick said.
— -- A Kansas reporter was covering live-fire drills at a military base when she came under fire herself – by a group of cicadas.
KSNT reporter Katya Leick was interrupted by the flying bugs as she attempted to shoot video while standing in a tank. The resulting video shows her flailing at the swarm and using the microphone as a cicada-swatter to keep the bugs away.
Leick — who's been with KSNT for eight months — said she had to keep giving herself pep talks to get through the 10 minutes that “felt like forever.” She could barely get a word out before the cicadas would interrupt once again.
“Every time I tried to start talking, they’d come. I was like, ‘I need to hold it together, come on, I just have to get this done with’,” she told ABC News today.
She did her best to keep herself composed as the cicadas buzzed around her head, until one flew and landed on her face; the one thing she said she didn’t want to happen.
“Sometimes you just have to take what Mother Nature throws at you,” the 24-year-old joked.
Leick was reporting from ‘Victory Week’ at U.S. Army base Fort Riley, where the public could watch how soldiers used explosive devices like the ones they would utilize in battle.
“I was lucky it was just cicadas and not something poisonous,” she said. “They sound even more annoying than anything.”
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