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Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, it’s door #2)

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

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If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Brood X Cicadas Emerge

Brood X Cicadas Emerge

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It looks like the 17-year cicada onslaught is beginning. They’ve spent their time developing underground, and now it’s time for them to fuck and die. They live only for a few days and don’t eat during that time. But there will be a lot of them emerging over days and weeks.

Here’s where they live.

Are you seeing or hearing them? Have you eaten any? They are supposed to taste like shrimp, and there are recipes on the internet if you are so inclined.

ETA: Here’s more reading on them.

Open Thread!

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Chris Johnson

    “Have you eaten any” would not be the first question that’d come to my mind o_O

  2. 2.

    MagdaInBlack

    I think it is an amazing thing that those little critters, even just a few of them, can make such a deafening amount of noise.
    I have no desire to taste them, ty.

  3. 3.

    RandomMonster

    I only moved to MD a couple years ago. The had no idea I was signing up for this.

    I’m an adventurous eater but I have my limits.

  6. 6.

    Cheryl Rofer

    A number of my Facebook friends were talking about the edibility of the cicadas. Come to think of it, though, none of them actually said they were eating them.

  7. 7.

    MagdaInBlack

    The ones I see here in Chicagoland are more iridescent blue than that one up top, really very pretty.

  9. 9.

    Catherine D.

    Thankfully there are no broods near me.

    On the bug eating front, my uncle had someone who came to his office and would clean out the candy bowl. So Unka Pat put out a bowl of chocolate covered bugs. He took great delight telling what they were.

  13. 13.

    Mousebumples

    Packer fan here, but I saw a joke the other day about how every 17 years we get cicadas… And a future NFL HoF quarterback wanting out in Green Bay. ?

    I’m didn’t live in this part of Wisconsin (closer to Green Bay) 17 years ago, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see if we get cicadas!

  14. 14.

    randy khan

    They’re here in northern Virginia.  We’re apparently not in the core of the emergence, but I think we’re going to have plenty of them.

  17. 17.

    mali muso

    Waiting for them to show up in force here in upper Virginia.  Friend of mine has seen some holes in the ground and a few cicada skins but so far it’s pretty random.

  19. 19.

    CaseyL

    Since shrimp are arthropods, and so are cicadas (along with every other insect) it stands to reason cicadas taste like shrimp.  It might be more unusual to find an insect that doesn’t taste like shrimp.
    No, I have not eaten a cicada.  Nor seen/heard any: their range don’t seem to extend to the West Coast.  I am bummed.​

  20. 20.

    lowtechcyclist

    Northern Calvert County, MD. No cicadas here.  Of course, there weren’t any here in 2004 either.

    A few miles can make a huge difference.  In the spring of 1962, I was an eight year old in a neighborhood called Hollin Hills, a few miles south of Alexandria, VA.  We were deluged with cicadas (Brood II, as best as I can tell), and it was great.  17 years later, in the spring of 1979, I was living in the Belle View apartments, just a few miles away. I didn’t see a single cicada.

  21. 21.

    The Dangerman

    When I was in China (Chongqing mostly), I ate everything…

    …except when my interpreter said the next delicacy was scorpion. Um, NFW. I didn’t know then and don’t really know now what part of a scorpion is edible.

    I’d eat a scorpion before a cicada.

  22. 22.

    Ivan X

    and now it’s time for them to fuck and die

    I admire the simple, unassailable bluntness of this writing, and its wry implication about humanity.

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    @CaseyL:

     I am bummed.​ 

    If you want the experience, I’m sure you can find YouTube videos of the loud bastards.  Make a long playlist, and crank the volume.

  26. 26.

    Low Key Swagger

    I think ours have learned to stay quiet, probably because we have so many birds.  Interestingly, the birds here do not seem to enjoy shrimp.  Make of that what you will.

  27. 27.

    M31

    Only a few so far here just north of Baltimore, but they’re coming — I raked some old leaves off a 3×3 foot patch of dirt and counted maybe 80 cicada ‘nymph’ holes, so multiply that by a very large number

    Best areas have undisturbed soil and lots of trees, so older leafy suburbs (my neighborhood) are in for it.

    I was in a different older leafy suburb last time and it was epic. They were so loud you actually couldn’t have a conversation outside.

  28. 28.

    dexwood

    I have eaten a cicada, I just don’t remember it since I was 2 in 1953 when they emerged. My mother told the story for years. She said I swallowed the cicada before she could get to me. Guess it didn’t hurt me a bit.

    Eta: Mom said she did all the gagging while I laughed.

  29. 29.

    M31

    LOL oh yeah, best cookbook description called them “dirt shrimp”

    (no I’m not eating any)

  34. 34.

    Ruff the dog

    In Montgomery county md we’ve been seeing them in our yard for a week or more. Evenings now we see several hundred larva on the march  in the evening, climbing the bushes and trees. We also foster a handful  or more most every night-bring them in the house and watching them molt is amazing! And how the freshly molted adult hangs upside down to unfurl it’s wings, and then overnight the exoskeleton dries from pasty white to black. They are gentle and quite willing to be worn as jewelry fir a while.  However, never have eaten them. Oh, and they haven’t started to sing-I’m guessing it’s been a bit cool, but I could be wrong.

  36. 36.

    CaseyL

    @mrmoshpotato: I used to live on the East Coast – in Philly, as a child – and I do remember hearing that shimmering wall of sound.  I don’t remember actually seeing very many of them, though.

  37. 37.

    chrome agnomen

    i was living in western virginia during the last two cicada hatches.   i would run an old massey ferguson tractor making square bales, and anyone will tell you that is a loud piece of equipment.   but in those days of hatches, you could not hear the least sound from that tractor/baler combination.   an amazingly loud cacophony of cicadas simply drowned out every other sound. you couldn’t be heard to shout if you were more than 15-20′ away from anyone else.

  38. 38.

    Yutsano

    @CaseyL: Yeah…we don’t get nifty things like that out here. But I’m okay with what we do have, so it works for me.

    I’m not sure I ever heard cicadas when we lived in Connecticut. We might have been too far north. Well maybe some day I will.

  39. 39.

    NoraLenderbee

    Cicadas are the sound of summer mornings to me. I miss that sound a lot.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    Columbus is on the edge of their range. I didn’t hear them, but I’m pretty sure one of them flew by me while I was out walking this afternoon.

  45. 45.

    sixthdoctor

    In Baltimore area, Friday, nothing. Saturday and today, my shed and deck are littered with emerging cicadas and the shells they’ve left behind. I expect them to file building permits at this rate.

  46. 46.

    CaseyL

    @Yutsano: We don’t have lightning bugs (fireflies) out here, either : (

    Another thing I remember is going to my aunt and uncle’s house in Cheltenham PA, and seeing clouds of lightning bugs putting on a show in the back yard.  We used to catch them by the jarful, then let them all go at once.

    I do miss lightning bugs.

  47. 47.

    Ohio Mom

    I haven’t seen them yet here in southwest Ohio. I’m expecting to see them Wednesday — it’s going to rain Monday and Tuesday, and that will soften the ground up.

    My yard and neighborhood will be full of cicadas and I will be very happy. It sends me, when they are loud and I can feel the vibration of their buzzing in my bones.

    The first time I experienced them was 1987, nine years after I moved to Ohio. I wonder if I’ll be around seventeen years from now, I’d be 83. Makes this year a little poignant.

    Really, I consider the cicadas a natural wonder, up there with any other you can name. It’s nature at full force, a reminder of what a strange, inscrutable planet we get to inhabit. And all I have to do is open my front door.

  50. 50.

    Jharp

    Central Indiana here. Park close by. Lots of trees. Parkway. Lots of grass.

    Not one cicada yet.

    And now I’m suffering from tinnitus. And it sounds like cicadas.

  51. 51.

    debbie

    @CaseyL:

    There’s a colony of fireflies that emerges outside my living room window. I like turning out the lights, sitting by the window, and watching their dances.

  52. 52.

    mazareth

    I live too far north and west to experience this. Where I am in Wisconsin, we do get some cicadas every year. However, they don’t generally emerge until mid to late summer. When I was a kid, I thought that the cicada calls were caused by power lines, because that’s where I would often hear them . I later realized that it was cicadas in the trees near the power lines.

    Another, similar experience is hearing spring peepers during their mating season. There are several places near me where roads are routed near marshes. When the mating season is at its peak, the sound is almost deafening.

  54. 54.

    Dan B

    @CaseyL: Where I grew up in northern Ohio we had cicadas.  I’m thrilled to never hear another cicada ever again.  Thank you Seattle!

  55. 55.

    Cermet

    here well north of Baltimore I’ve seen lots of holes but only one exoskeleton. Also, no noise. Has been very cool here well below normal for this time of year. Can’t wait for the lighting bugs – they really make the night beautiful to behold among the trees and fields.

  56. 56.

    RandomMonster

    Having spent the afternoon out in the garden, I can say I’ve only seen a couple so far. But it’s early days….

  59. 59.

    Ohio Mom

    We also have annual cicadas around here. They arrive toward the end of the summer and while it’s pleasant to hear them buzz, it’s more like the sound of crickets, it’s background music. Not at all overpowering like the big broods.

  60. 60.

    Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    Here in SE PA they are still lurking in the mouths of their burrows waiting for the soil temp to get warm enough. I only expect a few in our yard, but there will be millions in nearby woods that we’ll be able to hear.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    Would rather put up with hearing cicadas for a short time than the weeks and weeks and weeks long sound of a gazillion gypsy moth caterpillars munching, which we dreaded each spring when was living in the Poconos.

    Not snark – yes, you can hear them very well en masse. Eventually the state would send helicopters over the woods to spray clouds of Bt.

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @randy khan: Cool!  I grew up on Drury Lane.  It was a wonderful neighborhood to grow up in, with all the woods and streams and stuff, and (back then, anyway) Hollin Hills Elementary just a short walk away.

    In Belle View, I lived on Boulevard View Drive, right next to the parkway.  Used to joke that my true address was Mile 7.2 of the Mt. Vernon bikepath.

  65. 65.

    Rob

    @Ohio Mom: ​
      I’ll be 80 in 17 years. I am thinking this emergence could be the last Brood X emergence that I’ll experience totally on my own (in my own house). And, like you, I’ll wonder if I’ll be around in 2038.

  67. 67.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Ohio Mom: As a child, I spent most summer with my parents, camping in Manitoba and Ontario, where the sounds at night were loons, an occasional owl and the constant low hum of mosquitoes, but mostly very quiet. When we came home each August, I was always struck by how loud the northern Illinois cornfields and summer nights were. It took me a while to adjust

  68. 68.

    Rob

    My wife and I came across two small trees next to each other, a couple of blocks from our house, two days ago. Each tree contained about 20 newly emerged cicada adults, most with wings fully expanded. On our birding excursions yesterday and this morning, we came across a couple of adult cicadas, and another one when I was talking to a neighgor. We still haven’t heard any. I am expecting large numbers to emerge in the coming days as our high temperatures climb into the upper 80s. Surely then we’ll be hearing them too. This is in Montgomery County, Maryland.

  69. 69.

    debbie

    @Ohio Mom:

    I believe it was the last time this brood emerged, I went strawberry picking with my sister-in-law, nieces, and nephews. I believe this was near Chillicothe. It was a very large farm surrounded by dense forests. The noise level was unbelievable and came from every direction, and I was half-convinced something was about to burst from the trees and terrorize the puny humans.

  72. 72.

    ljdramone

    @sixthdoctor: I live in northern Baltimore City, in a 1930s-40s suburban area with lots of trees about 450 feet above sea level. Seen nymph holes in the yard, but I have yet to see any emerging nymphs or adults. My neighbor saw one today though, and I’m guessing after the rain we had this afternoon they’ll be getting serious about emerging in the next couple of days.

  73. 73.

    Mart

    Tree snapped in storm. Kinda freaked out when I realized how many cicada’s were napping in there.

  74. 74.

    Mike in NC

    Around 15 years ago there was a brood in NoVA. One day I was driving home from the Pentagon when they started hitting my windshield like tiny Kamikazes.

  76. 76.

    The Moar You Know

    I happened to be in DC for the last hatching.  That was a damn long time ago.

    They were loud and everywhere.  Piles of them.

  77. 77.

    randy khan

    @lowtechcyclist:

    We were surprised after we moved in to find out that the senior living place around the corner had been an elementary school – now the main school is at the other end of Hollin Hills

    We love it here.  We still have the 4th of July picnic and other community events and the neighbors are, on the whole, wonderful.  It’s been a particularly good place to be during the pandemic – my “office” looks out on our back yard and into one of the parks.

    And you may not have heard, but the neighborhood is now on the National Register of Historic Places for the architecture and landscape.

  78. 78.

    Uncle Cosmo

    I’ve told this story here before but it bears repeating. Brood X two cycles earlier (1987):

    My then-squeeze called me one afternoon to say her dad had gone crabbing, returned with a couple of bushels, was busy steaming them up & I should get my butt over to their place in a blue-collar part of SE Bawlmer. An hour or so later I was sitting at the DR table swathed in old sheets of the Baltimore Sun with then-squeeze’s family and neighbors, mallet and table-knife at the ready, an ice-cold Natty Boh at hand and a pile of orange & whitish shells beyond.

    One of the neighbor ladies allowed as how she’d watched an afternoon talk show that presented all sorts of ways to cook & eat the Brood X cicadas that were swarming the region. Another neighbor lady said, Yuck! How could anyone eat anything that ugly?!

    I looked down at my next culinary victim, a steamed-orange Old Bay-slathered ten-legged trash-fresser of the benthos, the Chesapeake blue crab (Callinectes sapidus, “beautiful savory swimmer”) – and couldn’t stop laughing.

    What’s so funny? Oh, nothing, nothing…

  79. 79.

    The Pale Scot

    “Have you eaten any”

    Deep fried, the batter was overwhelming, Cicada Tempora would be pretty good I think

  81. 81.

    lowtechcyclist

    @randy khan:

    We love it here. We still have the 4th of July picnic and other community events and the neighbors are, on the whole, wonderful. It’s been a particularly good place to be during the pandemic – my “office” looks out on our back yard and into one of the parks.

    I’m fortunate to have a very good view from my ‘office’ window, but I’ll bet yours has mine beat!

    I’m really glad you like the neighborhood, though honestly I have a hard time imagining someone not liking it!  And I’m glad (but not surprised) that the Fourth of July picnic is still a tradition after all these years.

    And you may not have heard, but the neighborhood is now on the National Register of Historic Places for the architecture and landscape.

    I had heard! A much-deserved honor.

    Charles Goodman, the architect who designed Hollin Hills, is buried in Ivy Hill Cemetery off of King Street in Alexandria.  (My father is buried just a few headstones away, which is how I know this.)

  82. 82.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Saw a reference on twitter to a 2018 (I think) article in the Atlantic about this year’s brood being infected with a fungus that produces psilocybin. I didn’t look up the article then, so no link.

  84. 84.

    p.a.

    I was in Baltimore for the ’04 event.  Could slip on the bodies on the sidewalk if you weren’t careful. Heard they weren’t great fliers, but they were buzzing around outside our hotel window about 20 stories up.

  85. 85.

    Michael Cain

    Blessed to spend almost my entire adult life outside cicada range.  Katydids are loud enough to be obnoxious, but it’s a consistent summer thing every year.  You get used to them, and since they’re nocturnal, it’s a lullaby of sorts if you grew up with them.  And without all the other horrible cicada things being described.  For the last 30 years, outside prime katydid range as well.  Do miss the fireflies.

  86. 86.

    glc

    NJ: Almost nothing so far but it’s been cool. Expecting them en masse momentarily. They’ve had their exit strategy in place for weeks now. And I’ve seen quite a few sleeping (I guess 100 or more by now) while planting things.

    Since they molt on exit they’re basically self-peeling shrimp. For some reason I’m more comfortable eating shrimp. But I suspect that fried with cocktail sauce one would be hard pressed to distinguish the two (for clarity: they should be fried, not me).

    They are helpful creatures, remarkably innocuous, but they do throw a loud party every once in a while when the spirit moves them.

    Since we have family coming in mid-June we’re hoping to be past the peak by then. Wondering if playing heavy metal music would help. I suppose there must be a study of that somewhere. Maybe we should try the female click sound on a loop.

  87. 87.

    scribbler

    No one has mentioned this particular aspect yet, but I remember walking around Brookfield Zoo in Chicago with my sister and our young kids many years ago, while the cicadas fell out of the trees and our kids screamed as they fell on them.  Quite an unforgettable experience.

  88. 88.

    Nora

    I find the map linked to the article strange. Southwest Ohio and Greater Cincinnati are a center for the cicadas. The map does not include the 3 northern counties of Kentucky which also have plenty of the same cicadas. I remember the emergence when I was in 7th grade, lots of buzzing cicadas being thrown in lockers and making noise. The teachers sensibly ignored them. I need to talk with my son who lives in Baltimore City on whether he is hearing them.

  89. 89.

    Nora

    I find the map linked to the article strange. Southwest Ohio and Greater Cincinnati are a center for the cicadas. The map does not include the 3 northern counties of Kentucky which also have plenty of the same cicadas. I remember the emergence when I was in 7th grade, lots of buzzing cicadas being thrown in lockers and making noise. The teachers sensibly ignored them. I need to talk with my son who lives in Baltimore City on whether he is hearing them.

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