A Neighborhood Watch has been issued for all citizens residing within a 4-mile radius of the Downtown Slug Shrine. Over seven dozen reports have poured into our office since nine o’clock this morning reporting that all dairy and dairy products in this area have spontaneously changed into heaps of June bugs, both living and dead.

While reports vary widely at this time, we here at the Watch advise all citizens to steer clear of the affected area, especially if you are carrying with you, or have consumed any dairy products of any kind in the last twelve hours. June bugs, we will remind you, are indeed harmless, but do tend to startle most folks by leaping around sporadically and knocking into light fixtures and screen doors. This ability to startle has reached new and terrible heights as folks who started out their days with a seemingly nutritious glass of 2% from Joel’s Milk Cart found out, their tummies now writhing with dozens of bouncing phyllophaga.

This event comes as a surprise to all as it does not correspond to any regularly-incremented transfigurations which we have grown accustomed to, such as the Opening Day Brat Sprint, during which the hot dogs sold at Brownstone Stadium sprout legs and race around the field to christen the opening day of our favorite sport, Footsack. Another town favorite is the Nightly Fright, where each night from 2:10 AM to 2:11 AM one random mailbox takes on human form and shrieks into the inky black of the night in order to both ritually lament the dimming of our Brother Star, Lemulen, and to signal to the postal service which house to begin the following day’s delivery route. This transfiguration episode, however, is unsettlingly random.

While Joel’s Milk Cart certainly had a rough go of it, serving as a veritable fountain from which thousands of clicking June bugs erupted and spread down the street, no establishment was so devastated as local cheese-only restaurant, You Cheddar Believe It. The sheer mass of kicking insects shattered every window and have rendered much of the equipment inoperable, putting the beloved eatery out of business until further notice.

“I felt like I needed to throw up,” local businessman, Doug Henley told the Watch, “so I did, and boy was I unprepared to see what looked like a bunch of oversized unpopped popcorn kernels come out instead of the go-gurt I’d downed this morning for breakfast.” Henley is just one of the many downtown workers who regularly starts his day with go-gurt.

Most grocery stores in the area have made short work of successfully quarantining their dairy sections and commencing a purge of the insects. These efforts have been aided by the training grocers received just last week when all the carrots wouldn’t stop growing.

In search of answers, a cow has been ordered to be brought within the area of the phenomenon to see if it will start producing June bugs straight from the teat. One way or another, this will grant us valuable insight into the nature of this happening, and perhaps how to expedite its resolution. The International Bug Catchers Union has suspended its strike in order to aid the many affected by this phenomenon.

If you or anyone you know are experiencing dairy to June bug transfiguration, especially if you are outside of the 4-mile radius of the Downtown Slug Shrine, report it to your local Neighborhood Watch officers immediately. With millions of June bugs pouring from our throats, go-gurt tubes, and fridges with no signs of stopping, now more than ever, the only way to know thy neighbor is to watch them.

This article was written by Senior Watch Official, Kevin Harrington-Bain. Kev-bot has had many run-ins with June bugs over the last few years and has developed something of a local rivalry that we all enjoy watching grow and mature, except for when the bugs go on the offense and then we all suffer. Follow him for more on Twitter @kkevinb