17-year Cicada

[pokergrader]

A few years ago these things emerged in DC, and it was loud and they just covered everything. It was pretty ridiculous but also pretty cool to watch.

Then they all died and there were dead cicadas everywhere for a few days.

[ThaSaltCracka]

I hate bugs

[MicroBob]

yeah. i don't understand that.

Maybe some of the other tales are of shorter span cicadas like 7 year or something.

But I remember we had these when I was in H.S. in Ohio. And I'm 36 now.
I was 18 then. It was my senior year.

We talked about these things last year in OOT I thought.

Yeah, they're freaking loud all night long.
And they're everywhere. Walking down the sidewalk at some times around dusk I think it would just be crunch, crunch, crunch and you would get squished cicada all over your shoes.

Yes, it was THAT disgusting.


My biology teacher in H.S. loved those things though.
He would catch them and fry them up.
He had chocolate covered cicadas, cicadas in butter and garlic, etc etc.
What a weird freaking dude.
He would sit there in class munching on chocolate covered cicadas saying it was pretty much like chocolate covered pretzels.
He gave extra-credit to anyone who would eat a cicada with him.
I said no freaking way. And I was getting a really crappy grade in that class but I still wouldn't do it.


Few months later that biology teacher quit his job in shame when his wife caught him in bed with another dude and everyone found out about it.

[ThaSaltCracka]

so cicada's make you gay?

[pokergrader]

I think it is fairly obvious that anybody who likes cicadas is an adulterous homosexual.

[tuq]

[ QUOTE ]
My biology teacher in H.S. loved those things though.
He would catch them and fry them up.
He had chocolate covered cicadas, cicadas in butter and garlic, etc etc.
What a weird freaking dude.
He would sit there in class munching on chocolate covered cicadas saying it was pretty much like chocolate covered pretzels.
He gave extra-credit to anyone who would eat a cicada with him.
I said no freaking way. And I was getting a really crappy grade in that class but I still wouldn't do it.


Few months later that biology teacher quit his job in shame when his wife caught him in bed with another dude and everyone found out about it.

[/ QUOTE ]
The link between eating chocolate-dipped cicadas and homosexuality is long and storied, Bob. Can't believe you didn't see it coming.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Man, no wonder the rest of the country is so gay.

[tuq]

[ QUOTE ]
Man, no wonder the rest of the country is so gay.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've heard that Bruce Bowen and Tim Duncan enjoy chocolate-dipped cicadas, but didn't think much of it until Bob's post.

[ThaSaltCracka]

clearly SA is way too far East.

[signal]

When I lived in Pennsylvania we had these cicadas emerge. I think they were of the 13 year variety, however. I thought they were annoying, but at the same time it was kinda eerily beautiful. All the little corpses sprinkled haphazardly all over the ground; some were even 'frozen' on the bark of trees in mid-climb. And their red eyes....

At that time, I was in elementary school and we played lots of baseball and wiffleball so it kinda put a damper on that.

The most interesting thing about these insects is, to quote wikipedia,

[ QUOTE ]
The cicadas' survival strategy is simply to overwhelm predators by their sheer numbers, ensuring the survival of most of the individuals and thus of the species. It has been hypothesized that the emergence period of large prime numbers (13 and 17 years) is also a predatory avoidance strategy adopted to eliminate the possibility of potential predators receiving periodic population boosts by synchronizing their own generations to divisors of the cicada emergence period.

[/ QUOTE ]

People can speculate on the validity of this theorized correspondence between prime number year emergences and darwin natural selection of species, evolution, etc., and it may never be exactly proven, so to speak, but it is interesting that nature can develop such 'predator avoidance strategies'.