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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Cicada Picnic

The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming! To a tree near you ... well, maybe not. We heard the cicadas were emerging after 17 years in the ground and thought it would make a nice homeschooling field trip to take the kids to watch. The cicadas. Come out of their holes in the ground.

Picked a nice old park, with nice old trees, in an area that complained of the deluge oh so many years ago ... nothing. Not a one. Other than the grass being mowed perodically, we really figured this place for "undisturbed ground".

I read that they like the areas near the river so we headed for water. This time I wasn't surprised to find none. I figured the flood they had about ten years ago may have disqualified any hope of "undisturbed ground".

As for my own neighborhood ... Not A Chance. In fact, most of my hometown and surrounding areas are all new subdivisions. Once green farmland, no trees now or ever before, the only cicadas we'll get are the annuals. And we like them fine thankyouverymuch.

So, for the sake of education, a-hunting we will go. For cicadas.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I worked at a museum on Staten Island in 1996 when we had our 17-year cicada emergence. Since they had major collection of the not-so-little buggers, we had an exhibit (also called "The Cicadas are Coming! The Cicadas are Coming!") and a terrific "Adopt-a-Cicada" promotion where you could sponsor the collections. We managed to get national coverage as ground zero for the cicada emergence, and I even made it on to national tv as the cicada guy (our actual curators weren't available that day, so it fell to me). My daughter still has the Cicada t-shirt, adoption cerificate and I Love Cicadas button.