These are tales of cicada wimps and you won't even believe. It's more comedy than hard science but the tag still applies. (Washington Post: Read if you dare: Cicada horror stories)
No-one has reason to fear the cicadas except motorcycle riders who don't so much fear them as hate them. You don't know bug love until it hits you at sixty mph.
A cicada slowly pulls out of its exoskeleton after being buried in the ground for more than a decade. This scary photo was taken May 24 in Herndon, Va. (Kevin Ambrose)
- WP
I'm keepin' the fear alive, keepin' the fear alive.
That's the cicada emerging after it has molted from its underground form which emerged to the climb the tree. It couldn't bite you if it tried and it's tiny.
Here's a hot tip for drawing cicadas to you.
For more cicada horror stories, I contacted Dan Mozgai, who owns and operates CicadaMania.com. Dan warned me that cicadas are attracted to lawn mowers, weed whackers and similar machinery because of the sound they make. Essentially, the machines sound like a chorus of cicadas ready to mate.
No-one has reason to fear the cicadas except motorcycle riders who don't so much fear them as hate them. You don't know bug love until it hits you at sixty mph.
A cicada slowly pulls out of its exoskeleton after being buried in the ground for more than a decade. This scary photo was taken May 24 in Herndon, Va. (Kevin Ambrose)
- WP
I'm keepin' the fear alive, keepin' the fear alive.
That's the cicada emerging after it has molted from its underground form which emerged to the climb the tree. It couldn't bite you if it tried and it's tiny.
Here's a hot tip for drawing cicadas to you.
For more cicada horror stories, I contacted Dan Mozgai, who owns and operates CicadaMania.com. Dan warned me that cicadas are attracted to lawn mowers, weed whackers and similar machinery because of the sound they make. Essentially, the machines sound like a chorus of cicadas ready to mate.
- SD
Cicadas only emerge to find love. That lasts a few weeks to lay some eggs and then they die. Now you can sound with your lawnmower like the greatest cicada sex bomb on Earth. Enjoy that thrilling exercise in lawn maintenance.
Ed: that's a long time to wait to get lucky!
They do like kids on abstinence programs (i.e. they lie). In the case of the cicadas, it's true since they have waited seventeen years or thirteen in the case of these surprise early risers but they have all those years of libido crammed into two weeks so you bet they sing at night.
There's a wealth of crazy cicada stories in the source article and the interested student ... or comedian ... is invited to pursue it.
7 comments:
Remember the year we had the pool put in--all the heavy equipment and the operators swatting at the cicadas!! The current crop her in Cincy are early risers--not expected for a few more years.
Global warming has really confused those bugs as that's what I've researchers heard from researchers.
I do remember those crazy creatures and it's a shame they don't come to Texas. Kids in Sydney would hunt them and they're much bigger over there with at least half a dozen kinds. If we bring some of those bugs here, the ones who freak over the little ones will go completely nuts (larfs).
Eden park is coveted with them
follow and report sighting and amount at magiccidada.org
must get up early to watch them emerge on most any tree trunk
The memory of Eden Park can get me misty since ain't that a joy on Earth ... although maybe not so much when cicadas are flying about all over the place. It makes me laugh just remembering those little rascals.
That emergence is the craziest thing to watch since it doesn't even seem possible this bug can become that one. Definitely magic.
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