Dear reader, do you know that we are about to enter a strange phenomenon that happens only once every 17 years? As if nothing else is going for us, we are about to be infested with up to a trillion large and loud insects.
Do you feel like you are in a strange drama?
“Against the wind a mile! A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true to one another.. a plague of sighing and grief!” William Shakespeare wrote.
We got the plague. Check.
In Bard’s time, it closed theatres and ravaged life, and we have lockdowns too. Check.
And yes, Shakespeare was all about locusts in Othello, the locust eater. Check it out:
“The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida.”
That’s it. We are living in a drama-filled and strange time, and it is about to take a turn for the stranger with the anticipated “Brood X” in May and June 2021 for a handful of states. We have pestilence everywhere.
Brood X is on their way as soon as the weather changes.
Expect cicadas, and here is some “inside baseball” they are not technically locusts. Locusts are not quite as romantic as cicadas.
Ok, the Shakespeare thing was a hopeful step too far. Shoot, we are just living in a weird mess.
“Although they are sometimes called “locusts,” this is a misnomer, as cicadas belong to the taxonomic order Hemiptera (true bugs), suborder Auchenorrhyncha, while locusts are grasshoppers belonging to the order Orthoptera,” a bug expert wrote.
Nice try… at least I tried to have some fun with it. “Present mirth hath present laughter; What’s to come is still unsure.”
Brood X is cicadas. They are back this year. What to expect, a mess:
CBS News reported on the anticipated loud infestation:
“Meet Magicicada cassinii, better known as the cicada. Every year, a relatively small number of these insects emerge from the ground in the eastern United States. But once every 17 years, a truly massive brood of cicadas arrives in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, filling the air with a deafening mating hum that can reach up to 100 decibels.
That phenomenon is named Brood X, or the Great Eastern Brood. It’s set to return in May 2021. For the five to six weeks that they’re above ground, the live cicadas — and their crunchy, discarded exoskeletons — will be impossible to miss.”
The Magic Cicadas say there are 10 Trillion expected.
According to the University of Maryland, In the spring of 2004, millions of 17-year cicadas emerged from the ground. They crawled over trees, houses, and cars. They molted leaving exoskeleton shells on every surface. Birds feasted. Squirrels gorged themselves. Newly planted trees suffered. Children tiptoed through carcasses on their way to school. Parents scraped goo off their car’s wheels. The air vibrated with the cacophonous sound of cicadas. Then they were gone. But next year they are coming back. Whether you anticipate it with dread or excitement, they are coming again.
In his colloquium presentation to the UMD Entomology Department, Dr. Mike Raupp, an emeritus entomology professor at the University of Maryland, brought us up to speed on the coming emergence of periodical cicadas. The last time Brood X, the 17-year cicadas local to this area, emerged from the ground, entomologists were in heaven.
Expect to see some very funky recipes and cicada mania to start.
Periodical cicada Brood X (10) will emerge in the spring of 2021 in Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York (extinct or nearly so), Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington D.C.
Knowing the Democrats, they will get them registered to vote before the littler buggers emerge back for their next 17 years’ slumber. Let’s hope we have flattened the curve by then.
