DescentBB

Well, it's that time of year again - and the Cicadas are taking over the city. These have got to be, gram-for-gram, the loudest animals on the planet. I love 'em.

http://www.naturespic.com/wildlife2/9453.html

That's what the little (actually BIG!) buggers look like, and right now, there's about a BiJillion of 'em in the trees all over town. In one location, Harper Avenue in Hagley Park, where there's about 20 acres of mature Oak trees, they are so loud that quite literally, you can't hear yourself talk underneath the trees!

The ground is *covered* in the shed skins of the nymphs, and the birds are so full of them that they can't be bothered even chasing them!

Our cicadas are not the "periodical" variety - you know - the ones that all live underground (sucking tree sap from roots) for 13 or 17 years, and then all emerge at once. Ours are the variety for which 8-12% of them emerge every year, leaving finger sized holes in the ground from whence they came.

They're very pretty insect - and most are about 1½ inches long (3.5cm) and these ones are bright green with black bits. The wings, when they catch the sunlight they produce rainbow effects like see-through CD-ROMs!

Anyway - I like 'em, and I wish they were around all year long. I love listening to 'em in the evening while it's still warm. Mostly though, it cools down in the evenings here, and they tend to shut-up around 10-11pm - so it's not like they play their music through the night.

I usually get Dog day harvest flys, just as big, loud, and there's 10 times as many. They keep running into me, they're like the bombers of the bug world.

I DESPISE cicadas. My entire family does. Long Island is cicade heaven (hell) because of our very hot climate.

Cicadas sound cool at night, but when it's all hot and muggy they're annoying

Cicadas are awesome. I'd get really freaked out when I was but a weel lad, climbing trees in my backyard, and I would put my hand on a limb only to find, HOLY JESUS WTF IS THIS MONSTER STARING BACK AT ME??? After I recovered from nearly falling out of the tree, I would of course take a closer look and exclaim, "Cool!" and then take the cicada molting to scare my sister. Good times.

Cicadas kick ass.. If you were into stringing up bugs and flying them around as a kid, cicadas have to be the absolute best for it. I'ts like tieing a peice of string to a rocket

Heh, Scorch, I remember those alien-looking shell things would scare the crap out of me when I messing around in trees and stuff. Excellent for putting in sisters' hair.


We used to get Cicadas almost every year where I used to live, but every year we got those we also got something else... Cicada Killers! They're like wasps, only they sting Cicadas, not you. The poison paralyzes the Cicada. You'd see a Cicada flying around, and then a Cicada Killer would swoop in, latch onto the Cicada and sting it, and then hang on for the ride. They'd fly around like crazy for a little while, and then the poison would take over and they'd go crashing to the ground. So Cicadas were never a big problem. The Cicada Killers were almost as intersting to watch as tossing grasshoppers to the big spiders occasionally spin big webs on the bridge.

edit- Maybe you should try to find some of these cicada killers and import them. Of course, then you always run the rish of being overrun by Cicada Killers. But then the Cicadas would be gone, so the Cicada Killers would die off. Anyway. The Cicada Killers make holes in the ground and drag the Cicadas into. Fascinating stuff.

i think this was a cicada. 3 months ago on holidays i sat down and noticed this thing crawling on my jeans covered knee. it must be green like that coz it just shed it's skin.
it's so big! i bet it's good tucker (good eating) too. i didn't eat it.




this was thick in a rainforrest a few years ago. it was so noisy we had to cover our ears. you can see why when you look up the trees, they were all covered with these huge cicadas. and i say huge coz the cicadas i used to play with in W.A. were little things the size of horse flys. but these ones here (in all these pics) on teh west coast of OZ are huge in comparison. which size is normal anyway, are yours little or big?

I'll post some pic's of the ones we get here in cincy this summer.... we get our 17 year vist this year.

this one night borther father sister and I were out in the backyard then we saw the cidacdas come out of the ground! they crawled up the fence and ****, and it was cool because they was white. I wish I would have had a camcorder because that would have been a good vid.