A while back there was a thread about a large bug that only appears every 17 years…What was it called (my daughter wants to research…she’s into bugs)?
That would be cicada I think.
It’s a cicada. It isn’t that they only APPEAR every 17 years (there are cicadas in the South every summer), but that their life cycle keeps them underground as larvae for years before they emerge as adults. This particular group of adults is a particularly large one, and emerges in a 17-year-cycle…so this year there are considerably more cicadas than there are in normal years…huge numbers of them, really.
Redwolf
They were cicadas. I did a search – the link to that topic on C&F is:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=18368&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
There’s even diagrams for making an origame cicada later in the topic.
Debbie
Although I probably wasn’t here for that thread, I think it’s the Cicada.
Let me see…I’ll just open the back door and check. (loud, incessant, high-pitched hum from the trees, abandoned brown husks all over the back of the house, several red-eyed flyers crashed headfirst into the car.)
Yes. that would be Cicada. Pronounced Sih-KAY-duh.
Not to be confused with the Secada:
here’s a link for you from right in the heart of “brood X”
http://www.cincinnati.com/freetime/cicadas/
you CANNOT carry on a conversation outside right now. Luckily, they stop at night!
We have about 3 weeks more of this to go. One of our boxers eats them, the other stamps on them.
Since I have a 17 year old son, I have a real handy “reminder” of when these things come back.
My oldest daughter was also an infant during the last emergence…I do remember her sitting in her car seat while cicadas screamed from the trees in Northern Virginia.
I’m beginning to feel ignored by Mother Nature.
In another thread, Jane talked about the flooding in the Chicago subbies. Forty miles south of here, to the West in Iowa and East in Indiana, more flooding. Here we’re about normal to a little low on annual rainfall.
Tornados struck Tuesday night in all directions - we never even hear a single peal of thunder.
Cicadas are a scourge everywhere. here I’m seeing even less cicada shells than usual (none to be exact).
I guess being the forgotten child isn’t that bad after all.
awww, Chuck, I’ll be nice to ya and send you, oh, a few thousand or so. I know I can find THAT many just in my back yard!!!
We’ve gone to having “cicada checks” whenever we enter the house or the building at work. The little buggers hitch a ride in on your clothing. When you go to get them off, the males start yelling at you.
Cicadas aren’t a scourge at all unless you’re an orchard owner or have other small trees. So, the grub shells (leftovers from molting) have been stinking for about a week, I get a few splats on my windshield every day, and it sounds like someone has a slipping fan belt about a block away. Constantly.
I would call a scourge the summers in New England when the gypsy moths are going nuts. Entire hillsides defoliated, trains stuck in valleys and cars not able to get up driveways because of the slippery biomass of the caterpillars – that’s a scourge.
I look on the positive side. As a result of the cicadas, my yard got a free aeration. My 3-year-old has a new hobby.
There are many different kinds of cidadae; we get them every year 'round “these” parts. It’s the “Cicada Magi” genus species which are the 17 year variety.
You and me, Chuck. We have almost no cicadas in our little corner of the world. I would like to know the reason…I don’t know any bug guys…
Cheers.
Byll
I havn’t seen or heard any here. I remember them up in Tennessee, and I was expecting huge flocks of them. Supposidly they are really good to eat. I thought at the least they’d make good doggie treats.
Yeah, we were supposed to get a horde over here in Lancaster, PA, but nothing!
Close by in Gettysburg I hear folks are staying indoors to avoid the mind-numbing sound.
There was a hilarious column in the Washington Post a few Sundays ago. On a school bus to the middle school, a kid had three cicadas in a jar. A boy said he’d eat one (alive). The bus divided into a bunch of girls saying “Eewww” and a bunch of boys chanting “Eat it eat it.” He ate it. It was so good he ate the other two. Word of it spread immediately across the school, and all the boys were talking about eating cicadas, taking bets, and all the girls were going “Eewww.” After a couple of hours, the principal got on the intercom and said that all talk of cicadas had to stop and threatened to suspend anybody found eating a cicada or talking about eating one.
AFAIK, my cats haven’t been eating them, although my folks, in from out of town, did ask if our fixed male was pregnant.
The first one I ever noticed scared the BeJakers out of me. Looked like a giant prehistoric fly. It was almost 4 inches long. I haven’t heard any yet though. They must not like water…
Being from Canada, I had never heard of such a beast before. I think I would just stay in the house for fear one of them would get caught in my hair or something!
Here in Manitoba the big concern is a much smaller variety of annoying bug…wood ticks, and of course they say Winnipeg is the mosquito capital of Canada. You won’t find any of those 4 inches long though!
Thanks for the info everyone!
I think the cicada (we call them ‘locust’ in my area) hit different areas at different times. While Missy has them in Cincinnati now, my area of Ohio - about 85 miles east – won’t have our main invasion of locust for another 2 years. This could be why Byll, Chuck and tommyk are missing “their” cicada. Good things come to those who wait … 
… so, hang in there, guys. This just may not be your year.
~Judy