Posted on 04/18/2004 2:17:19 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
..........The 1987 appearance of Brood X began about May 15. By the first week in June, the males were in full song. Noise levels in Milford, Rodgers Forge and Roland Park were measured at 80 decibels in the afternoon. That's nearly as loud as a heavy truck passing on the Beltway and well above the state's residential limit of 65 decibels.
Pedestrians complained that females flew like drunken sailors, bouncing off walls and windshields, and dropping onto car seats and hairdos. Homeowners covered lawn furniture. Some draped vulnerable saplings in cheesecloth.
This year, panicked gardeners have been calling Carrie Engel, greenhouse manager at Valley View Farms in Cockeysville.
"I think a lot of them are misinformed and think cicadas are much like locusts and chew everything up," she said.
In fact, they're not locusts, and they don't chew anything. Their feeding - sucking on tender plant parts for nutrients and moisture - causes no significant damage. Aside from the smelly mess when they die en masse, their only real impact will be some tree "flagging" - a dieback of leaves as the females slice the bark of small branches to lay their eggs. For the most part, it doesn't hurt the trees.
"It's just like a natural pruning," Engel said.
Still, Engel recalled her own encounter with Brood X in 1970, after a high school softball game, when the girls returned to a bus that was parked under some shade trees - with the windows open. "By the time we got back in the bus, it was full of them," she said. "For a bunch of teen-age girls, it wasn't a pleasant experience."
The ick factor again.
Cicadas don't bother house pets - quite the opposite. Cats and dogs often find the surfeit of clumsy, crunchy insects the irresistible equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet. They just don't know when to stop eating.
Dr. Kim Hammond, a veterinarian at the Falls Road Animal Hospital, remembers the 1987 invasion. "The dogs got into huge piles of them, got sick and threw up," he said. "They don't even chew - they inhale."
Cicadas are safe for human consumption, in moderation - provided they haven't been exposed to insecticide (which is not recommended). Kritsky, who has eaten cicada nymphs "Cajun-style, stir-fried and raw in salads," likens the taste to "cold canned asparagus." Low in carbs, the nymphs are Atkins-diet friendly, he says.
Ick factor aside, many will find the spectacle fascinating. "This is gonna be active, raw nature," Raupp said. "They're gonna be mating, flying, crashing into buildings, running away from birds. They're gonna be eaten, having sex, laying eggs, falling out of treetops. And people will have the opportunity to witness everything that happens in biology." ...............
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
I was 12 when I experienced Brood X for the first time. In my childhood home, where my kids and I are temporarily living now, the sound and the mass of cicada bodies was incredible. I remember not being able to (actually not wanting to) walk barefoot the two blocks to the neighborhood store. And now I have lawn-mowing chore... I'll have to suit up for that for a month, I guess. I wonder if the neighbors will look askance at me if I make a screen covered hat... ick is right!
And the noise level!Sauropod remembers well the noise they produce. My kids won't believe what they are about to experience. They think I am exaggerating.
Oh well, it's only for a month or so.
Give yourself five demerits for reading the Washington Post.
About the Post... it doesn't dirty my doorstep. Somebody posted a thread on FR and I read it online.
:-)
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