By The Way...

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
10:47:00 AM EDT
Hearing Night Moves -- Bob Seeger
Brood XIII sounds like a horrible video game to me -- the kind where you kill wave after wave of terrifying insectoid creatures -- but in fact it's something slightly more prosaic: A huge brood of 17-year-cicadas is beginning to emerge in part of the midwest, for a month of breeding and noise making:

Any day now, when the soil warms to 64 or 65 degrees, the big, red-eyed bugs will end their 17-year hiatus here and emerge simultaneously in a process that's still a scientific mystery.

The nymphs will crawl up trees, shed their skin and stretch their wings. The males will begin their deafening chorus to attract females. They will mate, and then the females will gouge holes into branches with swordlike appendages called ovipositors and deposit their eggs.

Four to six weeks later, newborn nymphs will fall to the ground and burrow for another 17-year stay. The adults will die. By August, it will all be over.

I was in the DC area when Brood X hit a few years back, so I'm prepared for this, but it looks as if where I live (southwest Ohio) is not a place where Brood XIII is going hit -- it's mostly in Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. However, looking at the Cicadamania site, I see that next year's brood -- Brood XIV -- looks to be in my area. That's fine. I can wait a year to be overrun by noisy bugs.

Are you in the path of the cicadas this year?


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This entry has 3 comments: (Add your own)

• #3 Comment from dpoem 
  5/22/07 7:20 PM | Permalink

  I remember the last time we went through this here in Wisconsin.  It was pretty damn freaky.  It was a windless summer night, and the only noise I heard was a heavy, steady rain.  However, when I opened the door, I noticed it wasn't rain but bugs falling off the house onto the sidewalk.  
  
  Creepy.
  
  I'll probably be writing a thing or two about this latest brood.  It should be kind of fun watching my cat deal with it.  
  
  -Dan
  http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/
  
• #2 Comment from marciepooh1976 
  5/22/07 4:47 PM | Permalink

  I grew up in the DC area. One brood emerged at the end of 6th grade. 12-13 yr-old boys like to pull the heads off these ungangly fliers and throw them at the girls. They don't fly any better without heads.
  
  They don't fly so well when they first molt either - Mom had one fall down her shirt on day. Luckily she was near the door so the shirt wasn't completely off before she was inside. I think the cicada died of fright when she started screaming.
  
  "Their deafening chorus" was mistaken for the neighbor's lawn mower one day, over the phone, by my brother. He was in Birmingham and Dad was in our kitchen with the door open. So glad I'm not around this brood.
• #1 Comment from monponsett 
  5/22/07 11:02 AM | Permalink

  Just one of the many reasons why I never consider moving from New England.