Thursday, June 9, 2011

We have visitors...and LOTS of them!!!



Ugly, not cute, swarming, loud, visitors. Today, they surprised me in the garden around every corner. Yesterday, three landed on me in the backyard within 5 minutes. I'm not wearing brown outside for the next 4 weeks. This morning, they were hanging out...

on tomato cages

on our chives

on the cucumbers

on the green beans

and surprise! in the dill

This is quite the phenomenon. I've been hearing rumors that these are the 13-year kind, that they live underground all that time, and some people are making icecream out of them. (ps. I was also deeply disturbed by that surprise video of them emerging in that link. blech.) I can remember them from 1998, but still wanted to know more about this. Well, I started researching it and decided to stop my pursuit after reading this gem:

"After years of living in underground tunnels, thousands of periodical cicadas emerge from the earth, as if by a predetermined signal, shed their nymphal skins, and spread out through the nearby trees and bushes. Up to 40,000 can emerge from a under a single tree!"

No thank you. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares. When are they going away?