The terror Inteachán was now experiencing is the special kind reserved for plagues and pestilence and other seemingly unworldly but somehow wholly natural occurrences like this sudden stridulatory squall.

It is one thing to be standing and staring at a dead insect pinned to a board with a thin piece of glass between you and it but another thing absolutely entirely when the same insect is not dead and is joined by a billion billion relatives all trying to burrow inside your ears, nose and mouth.

A special kind of terror indeed.