Cicada

[Ana]

Just wanted to share my cicada shell pic, found it on our tree in back.

[tgoddess]

Awesome photo, Ana! 

Do those things seem WAY more noisy than usual this year?   Generally around 5 or 6pm you can't even hear the people with the loud, booming car stereos , due to the cicadas (cicadae?).

[Sandy]

Just wait ... anyone know when the return of the 18 year ones is? I still remember my friend's malmute getting fat eating them that summer.

[formerfalcon]

A friend of mine recently told me she believes it to be next year 2007.  I do seem to recall it being very early 90's (say 1990 or 1991) and I remember driving west down 26th street (west of Harlem thru Riverside)  many times that summer during the day and the noise coming from them was incredible.  We lived near Austin Blvd and Cermak at the time and we didn't have many. A friend who walks thru Riverside often said some properties would just be loaded with the cicadas that summer.

[Bear]

The big one is next year. Some candy stores were selling fried. chocolate
covered cicadas last time around.

Eat up boys and girls

[delbowz]

It IS next year.  I lived and went to school in Elmhurst when the last ones came - and I remember them being everywhere.  I almost got into an accident b/c a swarm of them flew in my car window while I was driving (no a/c at the time).   I am so glad right now that I don't have any trees in my yard!!!  (Right now, I hate that I don't have trees - and two years from now will hate it again - but won't miss the cicadas in my backyard.

Denise

[Beans]

ASK TOM WHY


Published August 16, 2006
Chicago Tribune

Dear Tom,

Why am I seeing so many cicadas this year? I was expecting the 17-year cicadas next summer, but it seems like some of them have jumped the gun and arrived a summer early. Does this have to do with the heat? The cold?

Nina Ginocchio, Park Ridge, Ill.



Dear Nina,

Biology rather than meteorology is at work here, according to information from the Insect Division of the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Most cicada species have multiple-year life cycles, most commonly 2-8 years, but some adults can be found every year because they are not precisely synchronized--and those "annual" cicadas are what you are seeing.

But brace yourself, because the next onslaught of 17-year cicadas is due next year. Known as "brood 13," they will emerge in vast numbers in the summer of 2007 across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.

[chandasz]

Can't remember what year-- but I grew up in NJ and we had such a swarm of locusts one year. There were all these recipes on how to cook them. I remember my dog eating them as fast as she could. Ewwww.

Sweeping them out the doors everytime we opened them. We kept a broom right next to any door that went out. NASTY.


Crunch crunch crunch of walking all over them

[Ana]

Awesome photo, Ana! 

Do those things seem WAY more noisy than usual this year?   Generally around 5 or 6pm you can't even hear the people with the loud, booming car stereos , due to the cicadas (cicadae?).

Thank you!  Yes, they are noisier.  My co-worker calls them heat bugs.  I am so used to the noise that when my children asked me what it was, I responded, "What noise?"

[scoon]

My dad grew up in Iowa and always called them "Katie Killers"...  so I picked it up too.  Has anyone else heard them called that?

[Matryoshka]

A friend of mine recently told me she believes it to be next year 2007.  I do seem to recall it being very early 90's (say 1990 or 1991) and I remember driving west down 26th street (west of Harlem thru Riverside)  many times that summer during the day and the noise coming from them was incredible.  We lived near Austin Blvd and Cermak at the time and we didn't have many. A friend who walks thru Riverside often said some properties would just be loaded with the cicadas that summer.

I think it was in either '91 or "92, when my oldest was 7...he and his friends used to play with 'em. I recall seeing their shells all over the place, and how loud they were. I was expecting them again, in'98/'99 cuz I thought they come every 7 yrs. but I don't ever remember seeing them again, in such swarms; as they were that one particular year.

[Boris]