“The 17-year Cicadas are coming.”:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070521-cicada-facts.html The fact that subsets of them are named by Brood Year and the current batch is Brood XIII is just fantastic. Surely (where’s John Holbo when you need him?) there is a ’50s Attack of the Giant Cicadas film called Brood Thirteen. Or an early comic book? Even better, according to National Geographic, “Each brood of 17-year cicadas actually consists of three different species … and each one has its own song. … The three songs have been described as sounding like the word ‘pharaoh,’ a sizzling skillet, and a rotary lawn sprinkler.” _Cicadas of the Pharoah_ (Tor 1986), shortlisted for a Hugo. _Lawn Sprinklers of the Pharoah_ was the admittedly failed sequel.
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Plotinus 05.22.07 at 4:05 am
Maryland had its 17-year infestation a couple years ago. It can get very annoying.
Mrs. Coulter 05.22.07 at 4:06 am
The cicadas are unbelievably loud. Deafening. Shockingly loud. Did I mention that they are loud? It really sounds like space invaders.
The Brood X bugs (last emergence in 2004) were totally fascinating. Enjoy Brood XIII!
Patrick Nielsen Hayden 05.22.07 at 11:53 am
I like to think that if we’d actually published such a book, we’d spell “pharaoh” correctly.
Eszter 05.22.07 at 12:51 pm
My grad school graduation was at the time of the most recent East-coast invasion. It was definitely a bit annoying. Everyone’s videos will have a background noise. Yipee.
Kieran Healy 05.22.07 at 12:59 pm
I like to think that if we’d actually published such a book, we’d spell “pharaoh†correctly.
Ah, crap. In mitigation, I have a five-day-old baby and his copyediting skills are as yet quite poor.
Thomas Nephew 05.22.07 at 2:25 pm
I thought the Brood X was great here in MD. To me, the swarm sometimes sounded exactly like the sound track in those Star Trek episodes where some life form turns into a ball of light and floats away. I miss Brood X. Come back, Brood XI. I’ll be waiting. (I hope.)
arthur 05.22.07 at 2:31 pm
Brood XIII hit my suburban New Jersey home town extremely hard in 1973, to the extreme fascination fo us 10-year-olds. Places with big old trees and no new construction in the past 17 years get hit the hardest. They were deafening. The lawn was completely covered, and we used snow shovels to clear them off the sidewalks for a few weeks. Then one day they all started climbing up the trees, and in a few days they were all gone except for the exoskeletons. Some people wrapped teh trees in aluminum foil, to stop them from reappearing in 17 years, but I convinced my parents thought that would be a tragic loss of cool creepy things.
I was in law schoool in a different climate zone in 1990 and missed the show. back in New Jersey now, and the sake of my son, I hope they hit our town this round.
perianwyr 05.22.07 at 2:52 pm
Cicadas are awesome. They are the most relaxed bug ever; plenty of fun for kids. You can pick them up and stick them on your arm, and they just hang out. I keep hearing about people who manage to get bit by one, but I can’t picture how that would happen. Maybe some folks are rather tree-like?
Russell Arben Fox 05.22.07 at 7:40 pm
We caught one of the cycles while we lived in Arkansas (though I believe ours were of the 13-year-cyle type). Pretty amazing noise. I believe we’re pretty much free of them here in Kansas. But then, we don’t have many cool insects here at all (no fireflies, from what I can tell [sniff]).
Wascally Wabbit 05.22.07 at 11:13 pm
I always thought cicadas sounded like those big ants in Them.
KCinDC 05.23.07 at 1:55 am
What, no recipes, Kieran?
William Sjostrom 05.23.07 at 5:14 am
Ah, cicadas. I recall the brood about 1970, when I spent a summer earning money cutting grass for several houses with big tree filled lawns. Cutting grass while being dive bombed by cicadas was not fun. Once I even had to use an umbrella.
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