Can’t sleep, so I thought I would share a small video I made the other day just to record the sound of the 17 year cicadas for those of you who have never experienced what they sound like. I’ll take another video tomorrow or the next day when I find a swarm.
Also, there was an incident in the other thread I would like to address. We don’t look people up who comment here then post information about them. I’ve deleted the offending remark, but that is a serious no go at this website.
Felonius Monk
Is there really anyone who has never listened to the Rhapsody of the Cicadas?
seaboogie
John – haven’t been following closely enough to understand your reference to the other thread, but here is a moving tribute to cicadas which I believe you will appreciate…makes me oddly verklempt. Cicadas have crazy eyes, and also beautiful wings – have witnessed one emerge and the drying of the wings close-up and personal
seaboogie
Sorry, bad link on the first try – better one here…..
Aleta
This kind gets going at the height of summer in Japan, and it;s intense. There’s dozens of types there, and now I find I miss them, especially when it’s hot.
Mobil RoonieRoo
I’m not able to sleep tonight either. Grumpy and I are in San Diego celebrating my mother’s birthday and my body is still on Texas time. I’m all screwed up after several days and have now entered the point of insomnia.
Definitely no cicadas in San Diego.
hovercraft
@seaboogie:
There was an episode of doxxing. Not cool.
inventor
A friend once took his wife from California back to Texas to visit with his family. One summer evening they were sitting in chairs in the back yard talking and the cicadas were going full force. The Texans there just ignored them as always, but my friend’s wife had never heard cicadas.
She asked them several times “what is that sound?” and they honestly answered that they didn’t hear it. She became more and more agitated and finally said “my God, if you can’t hear that. I’m going mad!”. Just then, my friend realized she was talking about the cicadas and everyone had a big laugh.
Betty Cracker
I’ve always found the noise cicadas make soothing — when I notice it at all. Usually I find the sound of rain soothing and conducive to sleep, but not tonight.
? Martin
I’ve barely been able to sleep this week. Wednesday’s shooting hit close to home as I knew the victim (not well, but we’d met several times). We were pretty certain what had happened the moment the news broke. Colleagues at UCLA confirmed our suspicions before the news caught up. I’ve been involved in stopping two similar firearms related incidents. I know of several others that were prevented local to me. We started revising our active shooter and preventative efforts Wed afternoon and that will continue through the summer.
Most active shooter protocols are centered around outsiders or terrorists. They previously assumed that the people sheltering in place were more knowledgable of the terrain than the shooters. That’s simply not true any longer. Wed also demonstrated that while employees are reasonably well trained in active shooter responses (with some pretty serious lapses on the part of UCLA employees), students are not as the laws/policies are centered around HR and not student rights. That will be expanded, but it’s a lot of work extending it to hundreds of thousands of students. And it’s particularly difficult at public universities that are open, public spaces.
The taxpayer cost of the 2nd amendment. Meanwhile, I continue to wait for my turn to be on the front line. Seems fairly inevitable.
amk
so, got bored of your own critters, cole?
magurakurin
@Aleta: Just what I was going to say. That sound is totally Japan in summer, at least the part where I’ve been imprisoned. Sometimes they start in at 5 in the morning. On those days you know it’s going to be brutally hot. Like Lawrence of Arabia Nifud desert hot…but with humidity…lots and lots of wonderful, soul draining humidity. Like a Floridians nightmare.
Betty Cracker
@? Martin: That’s awful. I’m sorry. The cost of the 2nd amendment in human terms is incalculable.
Aleta
@magurakurin: For a few years it was nightmarish for me, and then suddenly my body figured out how to relax into the heat instead of fighting it. And at the same time that harsh earsplitting cicada sound was not oppressive any more, and I even liked it. And the J beer at the end of a hot day was a revelation, and with the grilled fish …
BGinCHI
No cicadas in Norway (or at least not here in Bergen). I miss that sound.
Less than two weeks to go before we go back and I’m officially BGinActualChi again.
Going to miss this place. But also looking forward to getting back so I can see how the Illinois political scene is doing, as well as the national presidential race.
Did I miss anything?
amygdala
@? Martin: I am so sorry. I know the UCLA campus well and my blood ran cold when the early reports of “active shooter at Boelter” came across my computer screen that morning..
The first active shooter training I attended at work, maybe 4 years or so ago, was one of the most depressing administrative-type activities I can remember. The cops who ran it stressed over and over that if the worst happened that our instincts to run toward trouble and try to de-escalate situations were exactly the wrong ones.
Within a few months, there were two incidents, both false alarms, thank goodness, but again, a sad and demoralizing sign of our times. I was assaulted by a psychotic patient as a resident and had a near-miss or two since, but an active shooter is a whole different situation. Something is terribly wrong that it has come to this.
I worked in a safety net teaching hospital, so can relate to the challenges of preparedness with students, residents, and fellows, who turn over frequently enough to make training a real challenge. And while installing locks on the doors sounds like an obvious plan, that has a downside if in a future incident the shooter has locked the door after him in a room packed with students, staff, or faculty. Those sorts of solutions will never be close to ideal. If these events can’t be eradicated, they have to be made as rare as possible.
Aleta
@magurakurin: Answered you but the comment got lost, weird.
@? Martin: Very sorry. Please take it easy for a bit if you are able.
Our university is a quiet place, yet lately I feel fear at every shooting. Have had past experiences with disturbed students, and once a scary paranoid husband. In the past the focus remained on just helping the student, but now I can’t assume safety on campus, but there’s also no way to change the immediate situation.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Felonius Monk: Yes, I found the audio of Cole’s video to be a quite annoying sound. Thankfully we don’t have them here in CA.
BillinGlendaleCA
@magurakurin: Sounds like what my wife’s description of Korea in the summer, she’s always managed to time our trips there in the Spring.
BillinGlendaleCA
@BGinCHI: From his comments last night PSIfighter is in your neck of the woods.
magurakurin
@BillinGlendaleCA: spring is good, fall iois better if you miss the typhoons.
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin: Again, my condolences. Are the thoughts of coming up with one policy for the UC system or on a campus by campus basis?
@amygdala: I had the same feeling when I heard Boelter Hall. I spend most of my undergrad years between Boelter and Bunche(my major was a hybrid Econ/Engineering). From what I could gather, the shooting was in Engineering IV which wasn’t there when I was a student(it’s to the west of Boelter).
? Martin
@amygdala:
They’ve found that won’t really be a problem. As with the ‘good guy with a gun’ scenario, the active shooter has the initiative and it’s almost impossible to counter. It likely wouldn’t matter if the door was locked or not, if that’s the only door, you almost certainly would never reach it.
Notably, the assailant here, as in the overwhelming number of shooting cases, was known to the victims. That only gives them more initiative.
The training is beginning to shift toward a somewhat more active action. Shelter in place, barricade is still the preferred action, but they’re encouraging people to fight back more than before. I don’t expect the protocols will change here, but there will definitely be a recognition that the level of training wasn’t sufficient and that it wasn’t broad enough. None of these things would have changed the result at UCLA, but had it been more like VATech, then it might have. Some things went pretty well, others not so well. We’re reviewing our restraining orders and campus restrictions. I’ve got roughly a dozen active individuals that have threatened someone in my area that either own a firearm or have a firearm offense. We can’t keep day-to-day tabs on them. Campuses are too big and too open to expect them to be stopped if they violate the order.
? Martin
@BillinGlendaleCA:
It’s campus by campus but shaped system-wide. The expectation for the reach and requirement of training will likely be system-wide (though campuses may take initiative on that and do more than what is required). It tends to be campus-by-campus because the policing situation varies so much. LA is very different due to the integration with the city. Santa Barbara is as well due to Isla Vista (their shooting 2 years ago). San Diego has a very different organizational structure for students. You saw Davis take it’s own tack (to everyone’s dismay) with the Occupied activities. Irvine is more closely integrated with terrorism task force since it has a higher terrorism profile than the other campuses (to many people’s surprise) and Merced even had an ISIS inspired attack last year. Everyone needs to roll their own to a certain degree.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@amygdala:
I work in security, and my instructions are to lock the door to my office, stay where I’m not visible through the window, and coordinate from there. I’ve got cameras all over the building I can watch.
Of course, you’re a lot less likely to get an active shooter between 2200 and 0600. Myself and one guy in the trading room are the only ones around to shoot.
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin: That’s kind of what I was thinking, and yes I’m surprised about Irvine.
Betty Cracker
I was in an active shooter situation at work more than 20 years ago. I don’t think there were policies in place to handle such an occurrence back then. The shooter opened fire in the office building cafeteria. Everyone, including myself, ran away and hid like scared little bunnies. After killing several people, the shooter left the building, drove to another place and shot himself. But no one knew he had gone since we’d all scattered when he started shooting, so we stayed hidden until the cops cleared the building floor by floor. That took a few hours.
It’s beyond insane that this is now such a common thing that companies, schools, etc., have developed and refined explicit policies to deal with it and organizations exist to train people on how to survive such events. Hey, here’s an idea: Instead of training people on how to flee or fight armed maniacs, how about we get rid of the motherfucking guns or at least make it a little less convenient for the floridly psychotic to obtain military-grade hardware? But nope, can’t have that because freedom. Fucking bullshit.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
Ay-men.
I think it was Churchill who said that Americans eventually do the right thing, after trying everything else? I guess we haven’t finished trying everything else yet.
Matt McIrvin
@Felonius Monk: We don’t get cicadas here in Massachusetts, or at least they’re not common to anything like the degree that I remember from my childhood in Virginia.
I miss them. That sound is the sound of summer to me.
greennotGreen
First, Cole, re: cicadas, you forgot to tell people to turn their volume way up.
And two corrections:@? Martin: “The taxpayer cost of our current warped interpretation of the 2nd amendment.”
And@Betty Cracker: “But nope, can’t have that because
freedomprofit.manyakitty
Glad to see reinforcement about the no doxxing rule. I missed the discussion, but that’s a bad act in general.
The cicadas in NEOhio are driving me crazy. They’re localized, almost by street, but the ones in our yard seem like they’re trying to make up for their limited area of influence. We had a storm blow by yesterday afternoon, and the clouds looked cool, so I stepped outside to take a picture. In the three minutes I was out there, one managed to get stuck in my hair, but I didn’t notice until I got back in the house and felt something weird. It fell out onto the couch and sat there staring at me. I kept thinking that I wasn’t supposed to hurt them for some reason, so I gathered it in paper towel, which caused it to make these high-pitched screaming sounds, and dropped it back outside. Then I sat down and tried not to freak out about it.
Yeah, that’s right. I’m a city girl and I own it.
CaseyL
We don’t have cicadas in Seattle, or in the NW at all, SFAIK. I think I remember that sound from childhood – wave upon wave of buzzing – in the Northeast (Philly in my case). Loved it then, love it now.
J R in WV
We’re about 20 airline miles too far south for this brood hatching. My next door neighbors have (had?) one cicada they evidently brought in in a truckload of compost. It buzzes and buzzes in a futile search for a mate. Not going to happen.
The last hatching of this brood, 17 years ago, I was working at a Division of Water Resources facility one mountain north of the Kanawha River, which runs through Charleston. In Charleston there were a very few locusts, buzzing. Once you drove the 3 or 4 miles over the hill to Water Resources, the hum was nearly deafening.
Crossing that one mountain made all the difference between being on the edge of a hatch and being in the thick of it. Some summers we get a low-grade cicada event here at home, but never enough to really impress you like the one going on now.
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman: We have the crickets and peepy frogs, yes. I hear those coming from the little wooded area next to my house.
Matt McIrvin
@greennotGreen: I remember assuming that the noise I heard was coming from a whole swarm of cicadas going at the same time in a tree, and then realizing that, no, that was the sound of one cicada.
low-tech cyclist
I grew up in northern Virginia, and in the spring of either 1962 or 1963, we got deluged with the cicadas. I was eight or nine years old at the time, and we kids had a great time playing with the cicadas.
The funny thing was, 17 years later (in both 1979 and 1980), I was living just a few miles away. I didn’t see a single cicada. I have no idea whether they came back to my old neighborhood or not. But they can be pretty localized.
Lawrence
Usually get the cicadas in July here in PHX. Mom, who grew up in Minneapolis, said the cicadas should mean 90 days till the first frost. We don’t always get a frost in PHX anymore.
Betsy
We have the usual annual cicadas. I’ve never heard the periodical cicadas (of any type). Very cool and thanks for posting.
Nice loud little Carolina Wren in the background, too.
ETA: Gotta love the scientific name “Magicicada septendecim.”
Bill Arnold
Here’s a large (150MB) powerpoint presentation I made a few years ago for 17 year cicada Brood 2 in 2013.
Am not a biologist but tried to keep it accurate and technical.
Might be of interest to people. Any questions can go to my name all lower case with dot at gmail.com.
Uncle Cosmo
@efgoldman: Unless I am very much mistaken, Aberdeen Proving Grounds is still active. When I worked for a private contractor in chem-bio defense my office was out US-40 about halfway from Baltimore to Aberdeen & we often consulted on projects at what was then Edgewood Arsenal, now the Edgewood Chemical & Biiological Center, which is across the Bush River estuary from the southern boundary of APG & may administratively be part of it. Whenever sky conditions were low overcast, you could hear the detonations from munitions testing quite clearly.
Uncle Cosmo
Biggest cicaca brood here hit in 1970, 1987, 2004, & is due back in 2021. In ’70 this insectophobe had a summer job carrying computer programs across the Gilman quad at JHU to the computer in the bowels of the library–& it took all my nerve to hustle those boxes of punched cards through the swarming.
In ’87 my then-girlfriend’s dad would spend off days crabbing & usually bring back a bushel or two & steam them for friends etc. I got the call to come over one day & ended up with friends & family around the classic newspaper-swathed table with mallets & butter knives & cans of Bud (blech) (or maybe PBR, still blech) & “beautiful swimmers” steamed orange & slathered in Old Bay seasoning piled high in the center.
One of the women recounted an afternoon talk show that talked about the various ways cicadas could be eaten (mostly after grinding them up, IIRC). Another woman said, Yuck! How could anyone eat anything that ugly?
I looked down at a classic example of Callinectes sapidus ready to be demolished…& executed the yet-to-be-acronymed LMAO maneuver. What’s so funny? –Nothing, nothing, I waved her off, still laughing…