Cicadas

Many of you have probably heard about these critters by now, but maybe those of you who don’t live in the affected areas aren’t familiar with the periodical cicada. This year marks the arrival of the 17-year cicadas, Brood X (ten), the biggest cicadas out there.

These little buggers end up being about 1.5” long. They’re big, and they’re loud. And this week, they finally started their mass emergence.

I’ve had to live through a cicada invasion before, but not Brood X. They were still large, annoying, and very plentiful. I was in college, and I remember people talking about it before it happened. They were saying there’d be millions of them, it would look like the trunks of the trees were moving, and the sound would be deafening. I laughed it off, thinking that cicadas came out every year, so why would this one be any different?

I was wrong. By mid-spring, billions of the things were everywhere. The shells were all over, layers of dead cicadas were all over the ground and would crunch whenever you walked on them.

And cicadas are not the Thunderbirds of the bug aviation world. They’re notoriously bad flyers, so they’ll just fly into your face or into hair. Which will freak you out. I remember walking across campus and seeing people just randomly spasming as a cicada would fly into them. I’d laugh, but then one would fly into my face and jerk around like a fool, too. There was no winning.

Until they all died, which was about six weeks later. More layers of crunchy, squished cicadas covered the ground.

So all that makes me nervous about this outbreak. But then again, the excitement around the Brood X outbreak has turned me into an entomological nerd. I’ve been studying up on my cicada knowledge. I even bought a cicada t-shirt. It’s awesome.

In any case, Brood X has now emerged in our region. Yesterday I was walking home from work and something flew into the side of my head. When I turned my head, I saw a couple shells on a nearby tree. How exciting! I thought. They were finally here. Then I looked closer at the shells, and got completely grossed out. As cool as these things are, the “ickiness factor” (as my boss calls it) is really high. Here is one of my cicada shell pictures.

There weren’t a ton of them out yet around my neighborhood, so I was all excited that they would appear last night. They’re supposed to pretty much appear overnight, as the little nymphs that have been living underground for 17 years will crawl out, climb up a tree, shed the shell, and become a big huge loud flying nuisance. Fortunately they don’t bite. That would push me over the edge.

And here are some more gross pictures (scroll down).

Anyway, I was hoping they’d show up last night, so at 10:30 I went out on our porch and shined my flashlight on the nearby trees to see if any were crawling out yet. No luck. But, it did again prove that I’m a huge dork.

So, now comes the waiting period until they start becoming deafening. The male cicadas sing to attract the ladies. Think of it as six weeks of bad cicada karaoke.

I called my dad yesterday to warn him about mowing the lawn. Apparently, some machinery noise is close to the frequency of the male cicada, so then the lady cicadas will start dive-bombing the noise-making apparatus. I told dad he should probably carry a tennis racket around on the lawn mower with him so he can swat at the 10 million lady cicadas that will think the lawn mower is a huge, sexy, crooning male cicada.

Also, a warning for you in cicada regions who have pets that go outside. I heard an entomologist on the radio saying that to pets, a yard full of cicadas is like a yard full of chicken nuggets. Dogs and cats will eat them up. A few won’t hurt your pet, but watch their bug intake. Too much is too much.

I’ll keep you all posted on how we manage through the invasion,

In the meantime, here are my favorite cicada websites, which are chock-full of good information, photos, maps, recipes (yes, some people eat cicadas), and cicada merchanside:

Cicada Mania
Cicada Watch 2004

Enjoy!