http://wamu.org/news/13/04/22/17_year_cicadas_arrive_in_dc_region

1 billion per square mile? How can that be? Doing the math, that breaks down to 22,956 of them per square foot! That just can't be right. Yikes.

Didnt the 17-year cicadas make an appearance like 6-8 years ago?

Can't wait. I have been craving cicada chips for 9 years.

There are different "broods" that have a 17 year cycle. Since they don't all hatch the same year, they hatch more frequently than every 17 years.

Here, this chart explains it better than I do.

http://www.magicicada.org/about/brood_pages/broods.php

DF Wrote:
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> http://wamu.org/news/13/04/22/17_year_cicadas_arri
> ve_in_dc_region
>
> 1 billion per square mile? How can that be?
> Doing the math, that breaks down to 22,956 of them
> per square foot! That just can't be right. Yikes.


So did you learn those higher math skills right here in our own FCPS backyard?

This is pretty cool. Though I'm sure after a little while I'll be more annoyed than intrigued.

Has anyone tried eating them? Are there any restaurants in the area that would actually serve them?

lolz Wrote:
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> This is pretty cool. Though I'm sure after a
> little while I'll be more annoyed than intrigued.
>
> Has anyone tried eating them? Are there any
> restaurants in the area that would actually serve
> them?

They are excellent. Cicade chips are a quick easy and delicious snack food. You can saute them in butter with some garlic and basil for an amazing meal.

Do you eat shrimp, crabs, lobster or crawfish? Those are arthropods just like cicadas. You can steam up some cicadas in old bay for maryland style treat.

My mouth is watering just typing about them. I hope they are here by the weekend.

Cicadas occupy 3 dimensional space so 1 billion divided by 43,560 isn't an accurate way to look at it. If you haven't seen them before relax. They are cool and harmless.

These?: http://deep-fried.food.com/recipe/cicada-chips-231490

SFB Wrote:
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> Cicadas occupy 3 dimensional space so 1 billion
> divided by 43,560 isn't an accurate way to look at
> it. If you haven't seen them before relax. They
> are cool and harmless.


Agree with everything you wrote. They are cool. They are harmless.

And 1 billion divided by 43,560 is not an accurate way to look at it. Were you in the same math class as the OP, who's initials are indicative of his educational status? The "D" stands for dumb, the "F" stands for - well - you know the rest.

Run Forrest Run Wrote:
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> SFB Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Cicadas occupy 3 dimensional space so 1 billion
> > divided by 43,560 isn't an accurate way to look
> at
> > it. If you haven't seen them before relax. They
> > are cool and harmless.
>
>
> Agree with everything you wrote. They are cool.
> They are harmless.
>
> And 1 billion divided by 43,560 is not an accurate
> way to look at it. Were you in the same math
> class as the OP, who's initials are indicative of
> his educational status? The "D" stands for dumb,
> the "F" stands for - well - you know the rest.


"F" stands for Fuck Face.

lolz Wrote:
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> These?:
> http://deep-fried.food.com/recipe/cicada-chips-231
> 490


Very similar. I use buttermilk instead of egg and no paprika. I may give the paprika a try this year though. Thanks for the idea.

I like driving over them on my asphalt driveway cuz it makes a nice crunchy sound.

Cicada tennis is also fun!

Dogs, if allowed, will eat them. They usually pig out though, and barf later.

I look forward to them...their "singing" cancels out my tinnitus. Nature's "white noise" machine for a month or so. Me likey.

Get ready! Forecast is for 7-10 days from now.
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We're going to have to raise taxes again in order to buy luxury housing units for them...

I can see it now... my cats will come into the house with cicadas firmly clamped in their jaws. It's going to be great fun prying their mouths open before they come in to keep those nasty bugs out of my home!

Someone really needs to make a horror movie about these creatures...

Amazing! Arkansas Cicada Emerging From It's Shell- Time Lapse .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz0DO7FO45I

Ouch!! Drilled By Cicada!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRUfMPcc-B4

How Many Cicadas Are Experts Expecting in Northern Virginia?
The 17-year Brood II cicadas, not seen since 1996 in this area, will emerge this month.
http://chantilly.patch.com/articles/how-many-cicadas-are-experts-expecting-in-northern-virginia-e1b05434

You’ve probably seen the headlines by now:

“Cicadas to swarm” the East Coast.

There will be “billions” of them.

“Like a horror movie.”

But the number of cicadas we’ll see this month (and through July) is actually up for some debate.

The Brood II 17-year cicadas are coming—that’s for sure. The last time they emerged around here was in 1996, and people from the Carolinas to Southern New England are expected to see them.

•Return of the 17-Year Cicada Expected This Spring
•When Are Cicadas Hatching in Chantilly?
Entymologists do seem to agree that we’ll see fewer cicadas in this area than in 2004, when the Brood X 17-year cicadas emerged. But that’s about all they agree on right now.

"It's a safety in numbers game," Michael Raupp, professor of entomology at University of Maryland, told WTOP recently. "They simply emerge in such numbers that they overwhelm the appetites of all the animals that want to eat them."

But environmental officials in Fairfax County say this year’s appearance of the Brood II cicadas will be “minor.”

“Fairfax County is on the border of where this year’s 17 year emergence will occur,” says Joan Martinez Allen, Urban Forester II with the Department of Public Works and Environmental Services. “Their presence will be spotty.” Fairfax County officials hosted an online chat about cicadas last week.

Regardless of how many show up, they are expected to emerge from the ground in mid- to late May and stick around for four to six weeks.
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I'd rather have an infestation of cicadas than an infestation of crazy helicopter parents that we have.


DF Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> http://wamu.org/news/13/04/22/17_year_cicadas_arri
> ve_in_dc_region
>
> 1 billion per square mile? How can that be?
> Doing the math, that breaks down to 22,956 of them
> per square foot! That just can't be right. Yikes.

Even at that density, they'll still be outnumbered by illegal spics.

Cicada! Wrote:
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> Someone really needs to make a horror movie about
> these creatures...
>
> Amazing! Arkansas Cicada Emerging From It's Shell-
> Time Lapse .
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz0DO7FO45I
>
> Ouch!! Drilled By Cicada!
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRUfMPcc-B4

Wow, they can hurt you!

I killed the first one today driving down OX rd and I had no wiper fluid. Have to head down to harbor freight for the electric fly swatter to roast a few thousand.

MkyWG Wrote:
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> I killed the first one today driving down OX rd
> and I had no wiper fluid. Have to head down to
> harbor freight for the electric fly swatter to
> roast a few thousand.

I seem to recall the last time they came out, they shorted out our electric bug zapper. Did anyone else have that problem?
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Depending on where you live you may not see many. I live in Chantilly. My neighborhood was built in '99. So I didn't see many the first time they came (2k6 or 7?).

Cicadas incubate in the ground, relatively shallow. no more than a foot or two. The construction destroyed any immature cicadas, so when they were due, there weren't any, except near the 66 exit at rt 28.

I won't be expecting to see many this go around as it's been only 13 years since the area was built.

No cicada chips for me.

I have only lived in my area six years. My house is twenty years old on six acres. What can I expect?

This is not a very good year to spend money on plants.
Watching neighbors plant flowers in my very old comunity. Pricrless.

Do they eat new plants?

They don't eat plants nor they they bite or sting. They are just stupid and ugly and make a lot of noise.

Well when I was younger, I lived in a house built in the sixties, in Alexandria. When there were Cicadas, the place was overwhelmed. You couldn't take a step on the sidewalk without stepping on them. It looked like, one of Moses plagues.

DF Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> http://wamu.org/news/13/04/22/17_year_cicadas_arri
> ve_in_dc_region
>
> 1 billion per square mile? How can that be?
> Doing the math, that breaks down to 22,956 of them
> per square foot! That just can't be right. Yikes.

Your right in saying that just can't be right.

1 mile = 5280 ft

1 square mile = 5280 ft x 5280 ft = 27,878,400 sq. ft.

1 billion per square mile = 1,000,000,000 / 27,878,400 = 38.87 per sq. ft.

38.87 per square foot is still huge but far from 22,956 per foot.

Let's really do the math Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> DF Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> >
> http://wamu.org/news/13/04/22/17_year_cicadas_arri
>
> > ve_in_dc_region
> >
> > 1 billion per square mile? How can that be?
> > Doing the math, that breaks down to 22,956 of
> them
> > per square foot! That just can't be right.
> Yikes.
>
> Your right in saying that just can't be right.
>
> 1 mile = 5280 ft
>
> 1 square mile = 5280 ft x 5280 ft = 27,878,400 sq.
> ft.
>
> 1 billion per square mile = 1,000,000,000 /
> 27,878,400 = 38.87 per sq. ft.
>
> 38.87 per square foot is still huge but far from
> 22,956 per foot.


You will see that in certain areas. I take it you were not here for the last invasion.

( 27878400 x 5240 )-147,197,952,000 = Cicada per sq ft

3 dimensional so the above would give you a estimate from 0-40 ft.

it would be a little less than one per sq ft from 0-40 dip shit.

One per square foot is still a fucking infestations!

Depending on where you live it's insane, Last time the sound reminded me of "war of the worlds" space ship laser sound. It can get insane..If you never experienced it before go out and enjoy it..They are harmless, except if you ride a motorcycle..Funny thing is, other areas have nothing, Not sure if that was due to construction.
Also, it's funny as hell to see someone driving down the road with the window open and gets nailed in the face by a swarm.

Cicadas 2013: Cicadas to outnumber people 600-to-1
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/05/cicadas-expected-to-outnumber-people-600-to-1-88423.html


WASHINGTON (AP) - Any day now, billions of cicadas with bulging red eyes will crawl out of the earth after 17 years underground and overrun the East Coast. The insects will arrive in such numbers that people from North Carolina to Connecticut will be outnumbered roughly 600-to-1. Maybe more.

2013 cicadas in D.C. area
http://bcove.me/5dcshrpk

Scientists even have a horror-movie name for the infestation: Brood II. But as ominous as that sounds, the insects are harmless. They won't hurt you or other animals. At worst, they might damage a few saplings or young shrubs. Mostly they will blanket certain pockets of the region, though lots of people won't ever see them.

"It's not like these hordes of cicadas suck blood or zombify people," says May Berenbaum, a University of Illinois entomologist.

They're looking for just one thing: sex. And they've been waiting quite a long time.

Since 1996, this group of 1-inch bugs, in wingless nymph form, has been a few feet underground, sucking on tree roots and biding their time. They will emerge only when the ground temperature reaches precisely 64 degrees. After a few weeks up in the trees, they will die and their offspring will go underground, not to return until 2030.

"It's just an amazing accomplishment," Berenbaum says. "How can anyone not be impressed?"

And they will make a big racket, too. The noise all the male cicadas make when they sing for sex can drown out your own thoughts, and maybe even rival a rock concert. In 2004, Gene Kritsky, an entomologist at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, measured cicadas at 94 decibels, saying it was so loud "you don't hear planes flying overhead."

There are ordinary cicadas that come out every year around the world, but these are different. They're called magicicadas - as in magic - and are red-eyed. And these magicicadas are seen only in the eastern half of the United States, nowhere else in the world.

There are 15 U.S. broods that emerge every 13 or 17 years, so that nearly every year, some place is overrun. Last year it was a small area, mostly around the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. Next year, two places get hit: Iowa into Illinois and Missouri; and Louisiana and Mississippi. And it's possible to live in these locations and actually never see them.

This year's invasion, Brood II, is one of the bigger ones. Several experts say that they really don't have a handle on how many cicadas are lurking underground but that 30 billion seems like a good estimate. At the Smithsonian Institution, researcher Gary Hevel thinks it may be more like 1 trillion.

Even if it's merely 30 billion, if they were lined up head to tail, they'd reach the moon and back.

"There will be some places where it's wall-to-wall cicadas," says University of Maryland entomologist Mike Raupp.

Strength in numbers is the key to cicada survival: There are so many of them that the birds can't possibly eat them all, and those that are left over are free to multiply, Raupp says.

But why only every 13 or 17 years? Some scientists think they come out in these odd cycles so that predators can't match the timing and be waiting for them in huge numbers. Another theory is that the unusual cycles ensure that different broods don't compete with each other much.

And there's the mystery of just how these bugs know it's been 17 years and time to come out, not 15 or 16 years.

"These guys have evolved several mathematically clever tricks," Raupp says. "These guys are geniuses with little tiny brains."

Past cicada invasions have seen as many as 1.5 million bugs per acre. Of course, most places along the East Coast won't be so swamped, and some places, especially in cities, may see zero, says Chris Simon of the University of Connecticut. For example, Staten Island gets this brood of cicadas, but the rest of New York City and Long Island don't, she says. The cicadas also live beneath the metro areas of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.

Scientists and ordinary people with a bug fetish travel to see them. Thomas Jefferson once wrote about an invasion of this very brood at Monticello, his home in Virginia.

While they stay underground, the bugs aren't asleep. As some of the world's longest-lived insects, they go through different growth stages and molt four times before ever getting to the surface. They feed on a tree fluid called xylem. Then they go aboveground, where they molt, leaving behind a crusty brown shell, and grow a half-inch bigger.

The timing of when they first come out depends purely on ground temperature. That means early May for southern areas and late May or even June for northern areas.

The males come out first - think of it as getting to the singles bar early, Raupp says. They come out first as nymphs, which are essentially wingless and silent juveniles, climb on to tree branches and molt one last time, becoming adult winged cicadas. They perch on tree branches and sing, individually or in a chorus. Then when a female comes close, the males change their song, they do a dance and mate, he explained.

The males keep mating ("That's what puts the 'cad' in 'cicada,'" Raupp jokes) and eventually the female lays 600 or so eggs on the tip of a branch. The offspring then dive-bomb out of the trees, bounce off the ground and eventually burrow into the earth, he says.

"It's a treacherous, precarious life," Raupp says. "But somehow they make it work."

Herndon Dweller Wrote:
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> Even at that density, they'll still be outnumbered
> by illegal spics.


HAHAHAHA

ICAND1GIT Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Herndon Dweller Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Even at that density, they'll still be
> outnumbered
> > by illegal spics.
>
>
> HAHAHAHA


But I wonder…Who will eat who?

I remember when I was in high school we had the cicadas in this area--that was only in like 2004 or 2005. Apparently that was a different "brood," but I don't really remember any being here 17 years ago--and I am old enough to remember back that far. Any cicada experts know what the deal is?

Reports from North Carolina are they are beginning to show their presence down there.

This year is the anti-node.

Herndon Dweller Wrote:
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> Even at that density, they'll still be outnumbered
> by illegal spics.

Herndon Dweller Wrote:
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> Even at that density, they'll still be outnumbered
> by illegal spics.


lol that was actually pretty funny

So many I can't even see out my windows.

I wonder what the frost will do to them?

Frosty Da Cicada Wrote:
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> I wonder what the frost will do to them?

It slows them down if they are out of the ground. If they haven't come out yet, then it slows them down a bit from crawling out.

Pet Safety During Cicada Season
Pets may think cicadas are a great snack, but eating too many can be dangerous.
http://reston.patch.com/articles/pet-safety-during-cicada-season-5803990d

Dogs, cats, squirrels, raccoons and birds will have a 4 – 6 week feast this summer as the Brood II 17-year cicadas emerge from the ground throughout the Mid-Atlantic.

But the Humane Society warns that, like junk food, too much can cause tummy aches and other issues for pets.

The Humane Society warned in 2004 that cicadas’ exoskeletons are not digestible, so eating too many could cause constipation or vomiting. (The 17-year Brood X cicadas emerged in our region in 2004.) Animals could also choke on cicadas’ legs and wings.

The Humane Society also noted that cicadas are like little flying toys to dogs and cats — they’re small (but not too small), they fly slowly and usually stay pretty low to the ground.

In addition, the exoskeletons of cicadas contain chitin, and some pets may have an allergic reaction. Chitin may affect some humans, too, according to Science Daily.

If your dog or cat vomits more than twice or seems particularly uncomfortable after gorging on cicadas, take him or her to the vet.

For humans, cicadas can be safe to eat in relatively limited quantities. See: Are Cicadas Safe to Eat? Cicada Recipes and Cooking Tips for more information.
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