We just had an explosion of Cicadas. They are everywhere just emerging from the ground and shedding the husk. The noise is just beginning.
From Wikipedia
Annual cicada, Tibicen linnei
A cicada (
/sɪˈkeɪdə/ or
/sɪˈkɑːdə/) is an
insect of the order
Hemiptera, suborder
Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many remain unclassified. Cicadas live in temperate to tropical climates where they are among the most widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to their large size and unique sound. Cicadas are often colloquially called
locusts,
[1] although they are unrelated to true
locusts, which are a kind of
grasshopper. Cicadas are related to
leafhoppers and
spittlebugs.
Cicadas are benign to humans in normal circumstances and do not
bite or
sting in a true sense, but may in fact bite after mistaking a person's
arm or other part of their body as a tree or plant limb and attempt to feed.
[2] Cicadas have a long
proboscis under their head that they use for feeding on tree
sap, and if they attempt to inject it into a person's body it can be painful, but is in no other way harmful. This sting is not a defensive reaction and should not be mistaken for aggression; it is extremely uncommon, and usually only happens when they are allowed to rest on a person's body for an extended amount of time.
Cicadas can cause damage to several cultivated crops, shrubs, and trees, mainly in the form of scarring left on tree branches while the females lay their eggs deep in branches.
[3][4] Many people around the world regularly eat cicadas; the female is prized, as it is meatier. Cicadas have been (or are still) eaten in
Ancient Greece,
China,
Malaysia,
Burma,
Latin America, and the
Congo. Shells of cicadas are employed in the traditional medicines of China.
[5]The name is a direct derivation of the
Latin cicada, meaning "tree cricket". There is no word of proper English, or indeed Germanic, etymology for the insect. In classical
Greek, it was called a tettix, and in modern Greek tzitzikas—both names being
onomatopoeic.
