So it's been a little while...

Things are nutso here, but we're getting to the height of cicada-season here in Silver Spring, MD. Tonight there were about a dozen singing around a neighbor's porch light (in addition to the hundreds and/or thousands singing at various other longer distances), and I had the truly bizarre experience of being able to pick out multiple individual voices among the chorus. The sounds almost make up for the beady little red eyes.

I have plans to try and capture some sound with my minidisc recorder--I'll post somewhere if and when...

Allergic to cicadas...

(via INTL/News)

Quite a way to discover you're allergic to cicadas—This clever fellow in Bloomington went whole-hog with his entomoculinary experimentation and cooked and ate (with garlic and butter) 30 cicadas. Being allergic, he wound up in the hospital. Yummy!

Who'd have thought...

The RNC is distributing a web video entitled "What Does John Kerry Have In Common With The Cicadas?" Oy.

The Life Cycle 4: Fully Adult

I'm gonna fly someday
I'm gonna fly someday
If I keep ready and watch and pray
I'm gonna fly someday

The Life Cycle 3.5: What remains

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion...

The Life Cycle 1.5: Bustin' Out

"I'm comin' out... I want my friends to know..."

I feel obligated to share...

...this tidbit from the Baltimore Sun's Cicada "comment board":

i think anything thats a bug is scury just like the dixe chicks face but thats just me i mean u might just open ur screen door and ur cat is munchin on a cicada and ur dog is vomiting.Someone like britney will be in her pool and then shell be like oh my god

Cicada Couture

Comedian Jolene Sugarbaker has launched a line of Cicada-themed couture via her Cafe Press web-shop. A few notable examples:



Seventeen Years Without Sex!



Cicada Carcasses Lunch Box

The Life Cycle 3: New Adult

Newly emerged and not yet dry, so it hasn't taken on the black coloration to go with those beady red eyes.

The Life Cycle 2: Emerging

During molting, the adult cicada emerges from the shell of the nymph form. This, by the way, is apparently the best time to harvest cicadas if you want to cook with them, before the adult shell and wings harden.

The Life Cycle 1: Nymph

This is a nymph (an immature cicada) crawling up the wall of our house to molt.

...the largest insect emergence on Earth

Good summary article from Reuter's. I find the following quote particularly interesting:

...humans are altering the environment to make it more hospitable to cicadas, by creating little patches of forest that have lots of edges—which the insects appear to prefer.

They're here...

Well, they're here. Brood X. 17-year periodical cicadas are beginning to poke their heads out of their cicada holes; crawl up trees, houses, and anything that holds still; molt into their mature (dark, red-eyed, big!) forms; and (soon) 'sing'. I've started this little tightly-focused weblog in order to chronicle this particular "invasion" of Brood X.

I'll be posting pictures, links, and commentary about life in the midst of the Brood.