1 Could be worse.Fair enough. The females laying their eggs can be tough on the trees, though.

2 Blech.  The blockquote looked better in the edit window.

How about....

Could be worse.

Fair enough. The females laying their eggs can be tough on the trees, though.

3 I've been finding some mud chimneys scattered around the yard, so they're on their way up already. In fact, I moved a tarp in the back yard and found a couple near the surface already, though they looked a touch small to be 17-year bugs. I got to tease my niece about it over my birthday dinner on Saturday, though--told her all about them. >:} I'm evil. Oh well.

4 I remember Brood V back in 1999.  I sat on my back porch and watched the Blue Jays and Robins gorge themselves on the Cicadas. The bugs were fairly slow and made easy targets for the birds who would pick the bugs off in mid-air.  It looked like the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.  The next day there were thousands of Cicada parts scattered all over the yard: heads, legs, wings, etc.  Pretty gruesome.

5

I'll let you know when it occurs... though I'm not expecting too much.  Duckford isn't 17-year cicada territory, not like Chicago (which was built on marshland and is fantastic for them).

Momzerduck tells of a cicadafest where after the first go-round, people were out with their snow shovels, moving the empty hulls off their sidewalks.

Duckford, though, was built on prarie-fire land... which is about as bad as it gets for cicadas to thrive.  Oh, we'll have some, and more than usual, but...

The Pond, now... with a small floodplain just behind me, and a cornfield past that?  It could be that I'll be needin' to keep my windows closed for a while.

6

I once spent an interesting evening watching one of the flying bugs hatch out of the tank-like tree climbers. 

The sound they make is the ever-present noise in Evangelion, by the way.

7 Not to mention the title for "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni"

8 None yet in Chicago but we're keeping our eyes open. Ears too.

9 Here in the land of Oz we get cicadas every year - not in the same numbers, but still sufficient for the purpose.  They spend just as long underground; they're just not all in sync.

10 Nothing will ever surpass Brood X of 2004.  Nothing.

You have not seen anything until you've seen cicadas covering every single tree on the National Mall.

(2021, mark your calendars...)

11 Wikipedia says that Brood X is the biggest of the fifteen recognized broods. It apparently covers a larger area and has a greater concentration of bugs than any of the others.

12 "In Japan cicadas are called Semi, a.k.a. 蝉" "I believe Semi means little bear — if your think about it, the nymphs do look like bears." inneresting. http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/2007/05/20/hello-cicada/#comments

13

We had the cicadas a couple years ago in Northern Va. My dog was an evil puppy at the time and it was absolutely hysterical watching him freaking out in the yard chasing them. He would be in hot pursuit of one when another would jump up so he would go after that one and then another would jump so he would..... The only time he caught any was when they jumped into his mouth. He really enjoyed crunching them.

It was like watching the Keystone Kops except much more energetic, stupid and fluffy.