Cicadas. They’re just harmless little flying nasty looking insects in heat emerging by the thousands. What’s the big deal?
I know some of you are excited about this momentous event, maybe even using it as a science project for your kids, but I for one am beginning to have nightmares. A few thoughts running through my head:
1. I should erect large telephone sized wood beams around my house and cover it all with screening, similar to a bird house at a zoo.
2. I need a bee-keepers hat. The kind that has the mesh the covers your face and falls down around your shoulders. Not only could I still get some yardwork done, I could wear it while golfing, since the courses will be empty.
3. I need a vacation, and what better time than now.
I read the article in the Journal Star today (online version; couldn’t stand to look at the picture in the dead tree edition) which said this: “If any construction or disturbance happened in the soil, the cicadas on that land would be destroyed.”
My yard won’t be hatching, but these things fly, so I certainly won’t be immune.
…so this is my plan… under the cover of darkness, I’m going to roto-till the entire neighborhood. They’ll thank me later.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I frightened the women of my household last year by attaching about two dozen empty cicada husks onto my shirt after mowing the yard, then walking in the house.
Actually … I tried to walk in the house, but my wife locked me out and refused to let me in until I removed them.
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:59 pm
I lived through the cicadas about 10 years ago when they “came up” in Iowa. It was horrible. It was like living in a horror movie, with all the huge bugs emerging from the ground, creeping up trees, crawling out of their outer shells as white jelly-like creatures, and then flying around. The noise they make is also an added feature, but I don’t mind it as much as the alien birth sequence thing.
My mother described mowing the lawn as “juicing” rather than mowing because of the numbers of cicadas she killed every time.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:46 am
Have these came out yet? If they have I have not seen a single one. I guess they are too scared to be in the East Bluff too.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 am
PI… Feel free while you are rototilling to mow my grass and water my plants! Thanks neighbor!
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
For those people with motorcycles, now may be a good time to wear some sort of facial protection. No one’s saying you have to wear a helmet (God forbid), but taking a cicada in the mug at 65 doesn’t sound like a very fun time.