They're a-coming!
 

On or about May 2004, Brood X of the 17-year periodical cicadas will emerge. If you are in this area, you will soon be swarmed.

I was a wee lad the last time this happened, and I remember the shells covering the trees and telephone poles, and the incredible sound. But most of all, I remember trying to walk to school without squishing them all.

Re: They're a-coming!
 

Dear god: I was just graduating HS when this...event happened, and graduation day was certainly interesting. *cringe* I recall when one of those damn things was on the inside of my shirt. What happened was that some friends and I were bowling one night. After we finished up, we walked across the street to a 7-11 to wait for a ride home. I was leaning up against a trash can, and was wearing a long shirt. I suddenly felt a movement under my shirt, I looked inside, and I saw that...that thing! I screamed bloody murder, and shook my shirt away from my body to shake the cicada off (and thank GOD it was crawling up the shirt side and not actually on my skin, or else I would have died! lol).

I'm on the UMMZ site...I thought that these cicadas were blind, but I don't see anything written about that.

Not looking forward to seeing them again, especially not living here in PA, where I hear it's really bad. :(

*feeling her bugphobia going up many notches...*

I don't think they're blind, they're just not particularly agile, so they bump into stuff alot. Unlike most flying insects, they only fly for a few weeks every 17 years, and they do so in such numbers that predators don't make a dent. So agility wasn't a particularly important survival trait.

Ewwww... Ewwwww... I hate bugs....:worried:

I bet that would be a fun time to test out a flamethrower.

You forgot smelly.

Alas, my olfactory memory doesn't seem to reach back 17 years. I don't remember the odor.

I voted for "tasty". I don't know what they taste like, but they must be pretty yummy because my cats bring about a dozen per year into the house.

At work we have been known to take various insect carcasses (including cicaidas), tie black threads to them, and wave them at certain bug-senstive female crisis workers in an attempt to torture them.

If we are going to end up with a lot of them, I may have to discuss having one of the tall guys climb up and tape the threads to the ceiling fan, so they can whirl around.

It will be just like they were actually alive and swarming again.

Yes, I will take pictures if I make this happen.

St. Louis had two or three varieties up and at 'em a couple of years ago. There were so many that there were piles of them under trees. You had to shovel them up an pitch them. Let me tell you they made an awful stink when they died.

Well...
 

Philadelphia is in that area, but nobody, I mean NOBODY, not even the periodical cicaidas can take then territory away from a good old fashioned, pollution fed, garbage nurtured cockroach!

I think we'll see very few of them in the city!

I suspect it depends on how much exposed soil there is in the area. DC has tons. I don't know about Philly.

Just checked your link... I really could have lived without the recipies...

:vomit:
:vomit:
:vomit:

BLECHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Well...
 

I don't personally fed the little bastards! Yet that is how they get so big I think....My personal staisfaction is from wasting the little bastards, if I'm fast enough that is....Later! :shotgun: :rattat:

Mmm.. Cicadas and Diet Rite cola!
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/graphics/c.../Yum%20Yum.jpg

mmmmm...good...BUT
 

were's the RC cola!!!

WOW talk about a down home, old school pic!!! :yum:

Well, I voted for tasty, but I would have preferred "crunchy." Nothing like a nice crunchy walk on a cicada-riddled trail!

Let me get this straight, you work in a mental hospital. Are you trying out for the Nurse Ratched award?:eek:

Yes, I have keys and shoelaces.

My coworkers already fear me, despite my having assured several of them, "well, you're on the list, but you're after 'reload.'"

By doing things like this I keep them amused and off guard. I may need that one of these days.

Their holes have appeared. Won't be long now.

How many ex coworkers do you now how under lock and key?

Strangely enough, relatively few. I've only seen one actual staff member (a college summer intern) admitted to our hospital ... oh wait, and there was someone in administration that we had to quietly send to alcohol rehab about 9 years ago. We tend to be relatively resilient.

Our problems tend to center more around things like the psych tech who was murdered by his crazy girlfriend two years ago yesterday, IIRC. That was right after my best friend's suicide (also a staff member), so we were a bit emotionally numb for a while. 2002 was a particularly bad year ... two deaths from natural causes, one suicide, one murder, and one part time nurse who drank herself to death. We're actually starting another round of this ... staff member died in her sleep last week, just before that the 13 y.o. son of one of our folks hung himself, and a former employee's son died of a herion overdose.

I just saw my first early risers. I saw about 10 of them while walking to my car this morning.

For heaven's sake will somebody tell me what these things are? I just assumed you were talking about crickets or grasshoppers but you make it sound like the return of the bodysnatchers or summat.

And I thought we had problems with daddy-long-legs....

Check out the first link on the first post.

These are the oldest insects in the world (IIRC). They were born 17 years ago, and are about to swarm again.

These guys are about as harmless as daddy-log-legs, but they are huge (2" long, .5" wide), noisy, and there are going to be millions of 'em.

Here's a telephone pole up the street from my parents' house.

And here's a closeup of the base of the pole.

Point of order, I think you mean Billions.:)

We've got holes around the tree and the bushes in front of our building.

I wonder if they'll affect Plastic Forks, which is June 26.

I meant in my neighborhood! Yeah... that's the ticket!

That's why we have an indoors, although I'm sure that we can come up with some kind of clever party game involving the damn things.

I hear they are emerging in Delaware and the line is moving north. We were talking about the locusts at work tonight, wondering where the hell they were, already ...

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH oh god nooooooooooo! :p :eek: :(

*still waiting for the invasion*

Nothing up here in King-o-Prussia, or further up in Trappe. I think the cicadas decided to skip a cycle.

What's the temp up north there?

Here's a nymph, on its way to find a place to molt. It's slightly longer than a quarter in real life.

I mean, here's a nymph:

God I can only hope and PRAY, but somehow, (sadly) I doubt it. :(

My mother says it is B.A.D. in Baltimore right now. I don't envy her one bit. She told me that some dude was driving around the neighborhood with a truch offering to spray the shrubs and the trees. She declined, because she wasn't comfortable that he was in a non-company truck (she's 67 and she's not trying to get taken advantage of).

*still bracing...* :worried:

I'm in Virginia. It's not so bad here. I mean, sure, there are tens of thousands of these things all over the yard, but no biggie. They really aren't that bad.

You want bad, talk about mosquitos. Talk about ants in the house. Talk about cockroaches.

Cicadas are really nothing.

Depends on what you see as "bad" (tens of thousands sounds bad...now if it was tens of hundreds, that may not be as bad).

While my mother seemed quite calm about them, my friend was saying that you look up in the trees and it's like there are no leaves, just bugs. So, I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder.

It the volume wasn't so huge, I'd feel a bit better about the whole thing. Ah well...

And yeah, roaches and mosquitos are bad..never had ants though.

I got some great pictures tonight.

Here's a nymph just poking out of it's shell.

Here's a different one, starting to unfold it's wings.

Here's one with the wings extended, letting them dry and harden.

And here's an adult.

From the link:
What do Cicadas eat?
Human children are the primary source of nutrition for Cicadas.

Are Cicadas poisonous?
Yes, Cicadas have a deadly venom that is injected through a small bone like tube known as the "Cicada deadly venom tube". The venom can kill a human being instantly. In 1987, the last time the Cicadas emerged in Cincinnati, over 7 million people died from Cicada injections. Many people escaped but most perished.

How do Cicadas mate?
The female cicada injects her eggs under the skin of a small human child. The cicada pupae then grow inside the child until they reach maturity. Unless you protect your children they may become host to thousands of deadly Cicada pupae. See how to protect your children.

Bwahahahahahahhahaha.:haha:

NSFW
 

But bruce they can infest adults as well !!!!

I still haven't seen one of the damn things, but was driving down from Berks County yesterday and passed through an area that has them. I still didn't see one, but I actually turned off the stereo to listen ... eerie.

How do people sleep through that?

They are basically gone from the DC area. You see a few here or there, but mostly they are latecomers that will never get any action. Poor things.

It's quiet again.

That isn't fucking safe for anything zippyt. I still can't work out what they photoshopped together to make that.

Check snopes. It looks like a lotus flower.
:vomit:

Lotus Seed Pod, actually.

What's funny is that I've seen this somewhat disturbing, but well done, digital enhancement numerous times, but I'd never seen the version with the "weird rash/infestation" story before hitting snopes.

Jesus. Whatever it is, I wish I hadn't seen it. It did look "fake", but still nasty! Fuck! *jabs herself in her mind's eye...out image out!!!!* :mad:

just had to revive the cicada thread.
 

Anything but the Cicadas
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Incessant insect buzzing is a fate almost as bad as jail, a Cincinnati man argued to a judge late last month.

Joe Armstrong had been convicted of selling $20 worth of cocaine and was facing sentencing before Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Martin on June 30, reports the Cincinnati Post.

Before Martin decided whether to give Armstrong the maximum year in prison, he asked him if there was anything he wanted to say.

Armstrong asked for probation instead of jail time — because this spring's invasion of Brood X cicadas had been enough punishment.

"What did the cicadas have to do with it?" asked Martin.

"They caused my wife, she was terrified, so she rode me as long as they was here," Armstrong replied. "I suffered so much mental anguish, it's just by the grace of God that I still have my sanity at this point in time."

"I don't think probation will work here," Martin answered, noting that Armstrong had been placed on probation 10 times since 1985, had not completed any of the terms of probation and was in fact wanted in Alabama for a 1996 violation.


Armstrong persisted.

"If I was to do six months, I would likely come home to nothing," he said. "No wife. No phone. Nothing."

Martin gave him six months in the Hamilton County Justice Center anyway — but made him eligible to cut that time to two months with work details.

As for the cicadas, there are none in the Justice Center, said Hamilton County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Barnett.

And apparently, thank GOD, there were none here in Philly either. *whew!!* :thumpsup: ;) :D

Zombie Thread Alert (plus nasty photoshopped pic)

I just took some photos of cicada damage, 2.5 years later, on some cherry trees.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/129/3...2410cdfae8.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/131/3...d36ee36866.jpg

Did they bore holes in the limb, HM? :eek:

They lay eggs under the bark with a stinger-like ovipositor, cutting short slits. The eggs hatch, and the young 'uns work their way out, fall to the ground, and head for the roots.

Good pictures.

We planted a new tree just before the cicadas came. They tore the hell out of all of its nice tender young limbs. But it is slowly healing. It's kind of amazing to me that they are able to drill through wood to lay their eggs. When you look carefully at the slender branches on all the trees around here, they all have those scars.

I knew they hatched their eggs under the bark, buy didn't know the larva would dig into the wood. I guess the larva only have to screw up the cambium layer, (and bark) to cause that damage. :confused:

The adults drill the hole into the wood and lay the egg. When the egg hatches, the worm just wiggles out the same hole.