conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

We went camping one year when i was young (it also was Memorial Day Weekend) and they were so bad the permanently damaged my dad's hearing. He heard cicadas all the time for the remainder of his life.

Yeah...They say that in 1990, the last time the "Northern Illinois Brood" emerged, people actually used snow shovels to clear them off the sidewalks.

This should be interesting.

yeah...the accountant in my office just told me that in Oak Park, that is what she had to do.

I went to a training session, at the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, for bike to work week, and that was one of the concerns brought up. They said the city proper should not be hit too bad. There is a cicada belt around the city. It will mostly hit the collar burbs. We shall see.

One slight correction - cicadas do not eat. They mate for a month, lay eggs and die (and stink). Any damage is from the egg laying, as they look for small branches on trees and basically girdle them as they carve a place for their eggs.

It is louder than I ever imagined before I actually saw them. Of course, we all use a lot more pesticide these days, so it could be a Halley's Comet event.