President Joe Biden, with a brood X cicada on his back, walks to board Air Force One upon departure, Wednesday, June 9, 2021, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
President Joe Biden, with a brood X cicada on his back, walks to board Air Force One upon departure, Wednesday, June 9, 2021, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
  • Biden was spotted swatting away a Brood X cicada he found on his neck as he prepared to board a flight to Europe at Andrew's Air Force Base in Maryland.
  • "Watch out for the cicadas. I just got one – it got me," Biden told reporters on Wednesday on the tarmac.
  • Luckily, cicadas can't sting or bite people.
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President Joe Biden might have round-the-clock Secret Service protection, but he hasn't managed to avoid a run-in with one of the billion or so Brood X cicadas that have invaded the mid-Atlantic in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, Biden swatted away one of the bugs that he found crawling up his neck as he prepared to board a flight to Europe at Andrew's Air Force Base in Maryland.

Luckily, cicadas can't sting or bite people.

"They can't do any kind of damage besides tickling you with their feet," Zoe Getman-Pickering, a post-doctoral fellow studying cicadas at George Washington University, told The Washington Post.

But the famous insects, which have emerged for a few weeks after 17 years underground, can wreak other forms of havoc. On Tuesday night, the bugs invaded an aircraft's engine and grounded the plane that the White House press corps was scheduled to take to Europe.

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