Cicadas - Party time, IL

Pasquale

Pasquale

Step outside for a second
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When my boss got in today, he was mumbling about something called Cicadas. When I told him I didn't know what was going on, he explained to me that every 17 years, legions of these noisy bugs, called Cicadas, hatch and are everywhere you look.

I did a little research online, and it turns out he isn't just crazy. There is a cicada 'attack' coming towards the end of May to northern IL.

17 years ago, I was 5, so i guess I don't remember this happenening. A friend of mine said she remembers seeing "little black bugs all over her friend's lawn and trees."

If this happens I am going to freak out. I don't want to say I'm afraid of bugs, but I will say that seeing bugs fills me with a great sense of fear. (That sounds less shameful.) I don't want to walk outside and see hundreds of bugs all over the ground.

Anybody have any cicada horror stories?
 
I thought the entire world was suffering from a June (Dune? May? Gayface?) Bug attack right now, wherein the little fckers do much the same - amass and swarm all over the living organics in nature (not animals).

I know BC's forestry industry got kicked in the nads hardcore last year or the year before, we lost something to the tune of 40% of our greenery (er... trees) in one summer alone. I never saw the bugs myself but it certainly opened my eyes as to how much of a problem it is.
 
They are big, black - and they molt off their larval shells everywhere. You'll have a blast! ^_^
 
Try eating one if you see it, the female is prized more cause they're meatier.

Anyways.. yeah I've had cicadas around here before, and I used to collect their molted shells(yeah weird), they can suck, and they can be loud as fuck, but I don't mind them really.

(Oh and people do eat cicadas heh)
 
Not even two years ago there was a swarm(biggest one in like 30 years) that hit the DC metro area, and I was around to see the horror. Let me put it this way.... Bleec***!!! I hope you like cruchy footings on your way out to your car, and dodging flying bugs matrix style, cause that is what you are in for. Its pretty freaking gross. I personally was surprised by the sheer size of these beasts.

Although in a positive spin, you really should not be affected much by all this. I was expecting it to be much more of an incovinece than it was. A word to the wise though, there were many reports around here of pets becoming ill because they were eating so many bugs. So if you have a pet that goes outside keep an eye on them. They must be fricken tastey to dogs or somthing.
 
I saw one of these suckers actually molt its shell. Gross in a very Discovery Channel way.
 
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lol i've been waiting for these suckers to spawn for years. apparantly i was about 1-2 when it last happened so it should be something interesting/creepy to actually see and remember myself. it's not everyday we folks from upper IL get attacked by a plague.
 
17 years ago I would have been about 15 or so. I remember finding an old tennis raquet quite handy that summer.
 
i got some stray cats living underneath my shed, so when the cicadas come around, theyre gonna have a field day!
 
Realia said:
Well I guess this means you're coming to see me a lot this summer Aly. I'm not messing with plagues. Ganbatte!
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Oh come on! I know how to show a girl a good time: BIBLICAL STYLE DATES! woo. Hold on, Moses is quite the party fiend. ;o
 
Alyada said:
Oh come on! I know how to show a girl a good time: BIBLICAL STYLE DATES! woo. Hold on, Moses is quite the party fiend. ;o
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Yeah then he'll toss the 10 commandents in our face. You know how wierd he is when he's drunk! Come on! And no wrestling with Moses either! I know the outcome of that...
 
Realia said:
Yeah then he'll toss the 10 commandents in our face. You know how wierd he is when he's drunk! Come on! And no wrestling with Moses either! I know the outcome of that...
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With Moses? Puh-lease. Cut me a little slack. XD
 
I threw one of those into a fucking spider web. Spidey was all like "Thanks Zhao!" and I was all like "No problem! Now bite me so I can be spider-man!"
 
That's terrible. In my life I've seem a similar thing occur with grasshoppers (the worst; I have a slight fear of hot dogs due to an event I'd rather not relay), a type of caterpillar, and once there were a ton of desert tarantulas.
 
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I remember the one in DC a few years ago. It was sooooo gross. After a while they're not always flying around, but they're all over the trees and the ground. You can't even find a clear space to walk outside, so you have to hear the horrid crunching with every step. Ewwwwwwwwww.
 
I was in 6th grade last time this happened in IL. There weren't too many of them around my house because my subdivision had been open fields before the houses were built, and cicadas need trees around to reproduce. My school was surrounded by older homes and forest preserves though, there were quite a lot of them there.

My mom tells me that even the "infestation" of my childhood was nothing compared to what it was like when she was a kid. She decribes gutters and sewers so full of dead cicadas that they literally clogged, and the noise being so loud at night that you couldn't sleep. At times you could look outside and it was like the ground was a solid carpet of writhing bugs. I haven't seen it that bad, and I don't expect it will be again for several cycles, as cicadas are susceptible to anything that digs up/paves over the ground. When the cicadas were bad was before the area was developed to the extent it is now.

Also, there are actually several different sub-species of cicada with different amounts of time in the larval stage. 2 year, 3 year, 5 year, etc. The 17 year is just the most prolific. There have been cicadas every summer, just not the large numbers of them you'll have this year.
 
chpal said:
0_0 ewww Cicadas! good thing i wont be in IL this year until July! the north suburbs get crazy with them i hear ; ;
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It's starting. I had three attack me as I went into my house today. They got in my sandals. It was weird. D:

PS

You're coming to visit me, right Chpal?
 
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