Garden Pests and Diseases: Circadas, Is This the Year?, 1 by chris_h

chris_h wrote:
We haven't seen any of the 17 year cicada emergence here but our son 20 miles south of us (near Chicago) is in the middle of it. Monday night we drove down there to watch the emergence begin. We saw about 2 dozen cicadas shedding their skins. The neighbors probably thought we were weird sitting in the yard with our flashlights. The next morning my son was finding empty skins all around the yard. A few facts I just read:

Billions of cicadas will emerge in the Midwest U.S.

In heavily wooded areas as many as 1.5 million per acre will cover trees

This years emergence is called Brood XIII

A single male's courtship call can reach 90 decibles

Ravinia Festival (an outdoor music festival near Chicago) has rescheduled its classical music concerts so they won't have to compete with the cicadas

They do not harm humans.

Birds, squirrels etc. and especially dogs love to eat them and they are high in protein

here's a picture of one we dubbed "dummy" because while all around him cicadas were busy molting, he roamed around trying different places to attach but couldn't find anything he liked. We tried placing him in good spots that seemed popular with the others but he wouldn't stay put. We watched for about two hours. We became quite fond of him.