The Cicadas!

Well, apparently we needed some relief from the more serious situations in the world. Enter the double brood of Cicadas. This brood has big googly red eyes and are reminiscent of soft large bumble bees when they fly. They have double decker wings and fly slowly.

NBC Headline:

"Billions of cicadas will emerge in the U.S. this year in a rare double-brood event

This year's dual emergence is a rare, synchronized event that last occurred in 1803."

Neighborhood debates on the listserv, funny FB posts, references to history and song lyrics have ensued. Is the whirring sound mechanical or cicadas? The people on the cicada side were correct. For days, I believed it was mechanical. This sound is different to the late summer sounds we are familiar with. The last time we had this event Thomas Jefferson was our President. People wonder if you can eat them. Yes, you can. Yuck! It even inspired a silly rendition of a Monkee's classic:

Here we come

Walking down the street

We get the funniest looks from

Everyone we meet.

Hey, hey we're the Cicadas,

and people say we fly around.

But we're too busy mating,

before we go back underground.

There are many in our neighborhood. We are seeing plenty of them on the perennials. I don't think they are doing damage though. I've read that they suck sap from trees.

This is a photo from Ian's daughters' backyard in Mebane. The holes are the "foot print" of where they emerged.

A quick video to give you a taste of the sound. This was recorded May 5th after we had a lot of morning rain and of course a power outage. Fortunately, the power was restored after a couple of hours.

Cheers to Happy gardening and enjoying the lighter side of nature's events!

5/6/2024- Here's a link to the BBC regarding this double emergence: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240501-cicada-dual-emergence-brings-chaos-to-the-food-chain