After a 17-year nap, trillions of red-eyed insects are crawling their way above ground in 14 states and the nation’s capital. Loudmouthed and ugly, the cicadas will fly clumsily into pets, bushes and unwitting pedestrians as they engage in a frenetic mating ritual that lasts well into June. Then they’ll disappear for another 17 years.
When I saw this I thought:
Pres. Bush being attacked by Al the CiQaeda.
What’s the story is the size of this brood. On the farm where I grew up we would get some every year on the trees. As kids we would play with the empty shells. The are real cool when you are about six years old.
Some years we would find more than others, but I never saw the quantities I’ve seen in some of this years news stories. I’ve read that their is also and annual Cicada, and I’m not sure how similar to the 17 year variety they are.
I only remember ever seeing one alive and flying (slowly) and that one was being persistently chased by a bird. They must taste pretty good, if you’re a bird.
At least it wasn’t a rabbit.
Dang it, Rodney, now I’m going to be mispronouncing “cicada” as “ciqaeda.”
The annual cicadas can get kinda noisy on a hot summer night, and I’ve seen a couple flying around looking for a bird’s gullet to go down. But they’re nothing like what’s being described about Brood X.
I’ve been told our local brood of 13-year cicadas will be popping up in seven more years. I have several reasons to not want to still be living around here then, but I’ll toss that on the list too.
Free cat toys
I doubt Kevin’s seen that many of the brood out his way – his town didn’t exist 17 years ago. Neither did mine, for that matter. Ah, development in Northern Virginia.
That said, I did encounter the brood in an older section of Fairfax over the weekend and it’s just as bad, icky, and loud as I remember from 1987. Thenoise was loud enough to be heard through closed double doors at my church (by double doors I mean, we have an outer door with a little box foyer and then an inner door to the main foyer). It sounded like a 1960s scifi movie spaceship was hovering out there.
Then there were the piles of writhing and dead cicadas on the walkways. Gross.