Sunday, May 16, 2004

And They Have Big Red Eyes and They Crunch When You Step on Them

In case you haven't heard, those of us on the Right Coast, (upper half) are being invaded by Brood X. No, not Gen X, Brood X, the every seventeen year infestation of Cicadas, Magicicada septendecim. (Yeah, and they're ugly, too.)

The noise is starting. It's a kind of high-pitch buzz. It's somewhat ominous, because you can't locate the sound. It's coming from all the trees in the neighborhood. If your ears can pick out a direction, the loudest sound is towards the biggest stand of trees around. Seventeen years ago, when we lived in the townhouse, the sound was from the remnants of the Great Bowie Forrest, which hadn't been torn down yet. It was a wall of white noise. This time, we live in a forest. So far the sound isn't as loud as I remember in '87, but it just started yesterday, so we'll give it time.

We've got Cicadas/Cicada shells on our back porch. We've got them on the wall of the house. We've got them on the sidewalk. Since we parked the cars outside last night I'm sure we've got them on the cars. And in a few days, if everything goes well for them, we'll have sex-crazed Cicadas flying (sort of, they don't get much practice) flying through the air, bumping into people, and driving cats and dogs crazy.

On the bright side, I've heard they are quite tasty.

For more on Cicadas, see the Cicada Mania site.

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