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After 17 years, the cicadas are back and ready to breed
Millions of the bugs are emerging across the Midwest, to the horror of party planners and the delight of hungry wildlife.

Normally, this would be the beginning of the busy season at Jim Nadeau's ice-sculpting company.

But when the phone rings, Nadeau tells confused Chicago-area brides and party planners that they might want to postpone their events. "The cicadas are coming!" he tells them.

"You don't know how disgustingly bad they can be," said Nadeau, 53, who has been carving ice figures for 27 years in Forest Park, Ill.

"The last time they were here, I watched one of my simple swans at a wedding reception get covered with these black, crawling bugs — and the swan was sitting in the middle of the food table," Nadeau said. "The swan was 4 feet tall and weighed 300 pounds."

All across the Midwest, people are bracing for a noisy, messy month. After spending the customary 17 years underground, cicadas classified as the Brood XIII strain have begun to emerge.

In the coming days, the cicadas — with their orange eyes and inch-long bodies — are expected to swarm sections of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin for their breeding season.

After the bugs emerge from the soil and shed their exoskeletons, the males emit a sound to attract females. The tone, a cross between a whirring blender and a motorcycle engine, can reach 90-plus decibels.

The females, in turn, climb onto tree branches and tender trunks, slice into the bark and lay their fertilized eggs. Though the egg-laying process can damage branches, they're more annoying than threatening to people. Scientists predict a massive swarm of them this year — as many as 1.5 million bugs per acre, particularly in wooded areas where the soil has remained relatively undisturbed over the years. Adult cicadas live above ground for two to six weeks.

Tom Tiddens, supervisor of plant healthcare for the Chicago Botanic Garden, recalled the last time the cicadas arrived here in such force: It was 1990, and he had recently started working at the public botanic gardens in the northern Chicago suburb of Glencoe, Ill.

"I'd be out in the trees working, and have someone five feet from me. We couldn't talk to one another because you couldn't hear them," Tiddens said.

He expects this year's crop to be just as large.

"The wildlife is going crazy. You see squirrels and raccoons and skunks digging in the dirt, feasting on the cicadas that haven't come out yet," Tiddens said.

"It's like Thanksgiving in May for them."

Many residents are equally fascinated with the impending invasion, which has sparked a strange mania in the Windy City.

Some Midwesterners are planning bug-themed dinners and have flocked to culinary websites to swap recipes for cicada cookies and discuss which wine would be best paired with "el chirper" tacos.

Chicago's Field Museum is opening an exhibit on cicadas, and the Morton Arboretum will host a series of lectures. The Chicago Tribune posted instructions on its website on how to make an origami cicada — as well as an online game called "Swat the Cicada," where players can squash the bugs with a virtual fly swatter.

When Welz Kauffman moved from California to join the Ravinia Festival in 2000 as its president and CEO, the staff warned him about the coming of the cicadas.

Kauffman asked the board of directors if he could take a sabbatical this summer, to avoid the bugs altogether. They said no.

So Kauffman gritted his teeth and revised the festival's schedule, by shifting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to later in the season and moving other concerts to indoor venues.

Some shows, though, he left alone.

"The Doobie Brothers? They're going to be able to drown out the bugs," Kauffman said. "The Mormon Tabernacle Choir? They told me not to worry: They're Mormon. They know how to handle locusts."   ::) ::)

Yuck!

They get outright annoying down here in Bama.  I mean you will hear them no matter what and no matter how quiet your car is :)

They get very noisy here also and you can't walk under a tree without having them dropping down on you.

I remember reading about this in high school!!!  lol It might be noisy but I would like to see and hear it.

I find it interesting about the cicada's. I was reading in 2004 how they swarmed in Africa, eating everything in their wake, the pictures of people standing in a swarm was like watching a sci-fi show. The swarms went to Saudi Arabia and in coming to Israel, praise God, the temperatures dropped to freezing stopping them. The other swarms were in Australia, and in South America. Then I didn't hear about the insects until now. I have a feeling they are going to destroy all in their path, and the sounds these insects make it just don't stop, song of the insects I guess. Here we look for big, ugly or bad evil characters, one swarm of these insects the big, bad, or ugly will run.

For some odd reason, I haven't seen them since I've been in Arizona. :D :D :D

Hi Heatherross,

Welcome to Christians Unite.

The cicada's here have never been as bad as the locusts in the Middle East. I certainly pray that they will never be that bad here.

Be careful what you wish for.  (http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb87/mom2bran/Laughing1.gif)  Actually, I can understand why you would want to have first-hand experience with something you have only had the opportunity to learn of in school.  For your sake, I hope you don't get them as loud and annoying as we had in my area.

I would welcome them with open arms if the would eat all the sand gnats and mosquitoes around here.  :D I don't know if yall have ever been introduced to a sand gnat or sand flea as they are called around here. I think they are mainly in the coastal areas but they get all in your hair and you scratch your head constantly. And don't get me started on the dog flies. Man...

We have dog flies here also. They are especially nasty when they start biting.


(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/randers/DogFly.jpg)


 ;) :D :D :D :D :D

Pastor Roger, that is toooo cute!  (http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb87/mom2bran/ROFL3.gif)

I have horse flies here, they are also nasty, when they bite they take big bites.