On our way back from IKEA (too hot and muggy for my dad to do the tourist thing; he decided to stay home and watch 3,000 Miles to Graceland in a nice, dark, air-conditioned room). It was on the sidewark to our house; it had the weird eyes and wings, so it was definitely a cicada, and it didn’t buzz when my girlfriend lightly poked it with a stick, so apparently it wasn’t a male.
Doesn’t seem like that big a deal, all in all.
Well, there’s this:
“When they were last seen, in 1987, Ronald Reagan was president, Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika were all the rage. The time before that, when Dylan sang, Joe Frazier won the world heavyweight boxing championship. Before that – when the great-grandparents of the latest Brood X appeared – Queen Elizabeth II was about to be crowned, and Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing were soon to become the first men to conquer Mount Everest.”
More from The Independent.
Then there’s the Save The Children angle:
” Although cicadas are harmless, Children’s Hospital Medical Center treated several cicada-related injuries – the 13-year-old who swung a bat at one and missed but connected with his friend’s face; the 8-year-old who opened his mouth and caught one in the back of the throat; the 9-year-old who tried to squash one under a moving car and didn’t get his hand out in time.”
Aw, well. Tess’ll be 17 and much too old for such hijinx the next time they come around. There’ll be nothing else to worry about, right?
I never heard em in California, only the sweet serenades of crickets, but in Arizona my first encounter was with one that I had early diagnosed as an obnoxiously loud powerline only to find there were no powerlines nearby. Now they are charming and far too numerous to attempt to control. For red ants though – I show no mercy. 😉
What’s weird is that, although I’m only 34, this will be the third bunch of cicadas I’ve seen. There’s a different brood that covers part of Ohio, and I saw them in 1982, and again in 1999.
Anyway, I for one welcome our new insect overlords.