CHICAGO – Coming soon: Brood XIII.
It sounds like a bad horror movie. But it’s actually the name of the billions of cicadas expected to emerge this month in parts of the Midwest after spending 17 years underground.
The red-eyed, shrimp-sized, flying insects don’t bite or sting. But they are known for mating calls that produce a din that can overpower ringing telephones, lawn mowers and power tools.
Brood XIII is expected across northern Illinois, and in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Cicadas live only about 30 days as adults, and their main goal is mating.
They don’t harm humans, although they are clumsy and might fly into people. Birds, squirrels and pets, especially dogs, love to eat them, and they are high in protein.
“They’re going to have quite a meal. It’s going to be like Thanksgiving for them,” said Tom Tiddens, supervisor for plant health care at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
They are periodical cicadas, which are only found in the eastern half of North America. The annual, or dog-day cicadas, that appear every summer are common around the world.
The last massive emergence of periodical cicadas was in 2004, when Brood X emerged after 17 years underground in parts of 15 Eastern states.
As nymphs burrowing underground, cicadas suck sap from tree roots. Almost all members of a group, or brood, burst from the ground within a couple days of each other.
They quickly climb the nearest vertical surface to molt and unroll their wings. In some heavily wooded areas, as many as 1.5 million cicadas per acre will crowd onto trees, expert say.
Ravinia Festival, a 103-year-old music festival held north of Chicago, revised its schedule to avoid classical musicians having to compete with the insects, said festival president and CEO Welz Kauffman.
An Illinois company that provides ice sculptures has turned down several outdoor parties over the next month. That’s because of what happened when Nadeau Ice Sculptures owner Jim Nadeau delivered a swan statue to a wedding in 1990, during the area’s last emergence of the periodical cicadas.
“We put our tray down and immediately the cicadas came off the ground and attacked the ice. Literally, it was a moving sculpture, this big black ugly mass of cicadas constantly moving,” said Nadeau.
“I don’t want to talk myself out of work, but that was just too gross,” he said.
Exactly when the cicadas will emerge is a subject of debate, although there is agreement they emerge once the soil temperature is consistently 64 to 65 degrees for several days. Biologists and insect experts predict the cicadas will emerge between Tuesday and June 1.
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