Free Republic

The Brood X cicadas are done copulating and dying, and now their efforts are bearing fruit. Over the next month or two, trillions of cicadas will hatch – and they’ll be raining down from the trees. But they will be an invisible rain, given that they’re smaller than an ant and will be barely noticeable, biologist Dr. John Lill of George Washington University told WUSA-TV. Before that, they will incubate for six weeks inside the woody branches and twigs where they were laid, in order to escape predators in the soil. “Across their geographic range, trillions will fall out of...

Journalists due to accompany Joe Biden on his first overseas trip as president were delayed on their outbound flight to England on Tuesday night - because of cicadas. A swarm of the noisy flying insects - part of the billions-strong Brood X which appears across the United States every 17 years - filled the engines of the White House press plane as it was on the runway at Dulles International Airport, reported The New York Times. The pilots were forced to turn the aircraft back to the departure gate. The insects were responsible for the delay, a spokesperson for Delta...

A few weeks ago, Michelle Watson woke up to a deafening, steadily oscillating screech. “What the heck is that noise?” she wondered. She went outside to her yard and saw hundreds of beady-eyed insects enrobed in a thick shell of gold emerging out of the ground and crawling up the trees. What Watson was seeing was the emergence of thousands of Brood X cicadas, part of a billions-strong insect swarm that has lain dormant for 17 years before arising to “scream,” mate— all over about three thunderous weeks. Watson had spent the past 20 years in Las Vegas, but moved...

In one of nature’s mysteries, 15 states will soon witness the reemergence of Brood X — or the Great Eastern Brood — of periodical cicadas. These “large, winged, kind of scary-looking but mostly harmless flying insects known for their almost deafening buzz” emerge in-unison every 17 years. Periodical cicadas have “black bodies and bold red eyes,” and spend 17 years lying underground in “wingless nymph form,” feeding on sap. While most cicadas travel as individuals or in small groups after reaching adulthood, periodical cicadas follow a strict schedule... “The end of May through June, it can get pretty loud —...