This year's cicadas, underground since 1998, are ready to make some serious noise

[Omaha Steve]

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Every 17 years, Brood IV periodical cicadas emerge from the ground to mate, lay eggs and die, and this is their time in southeast Nebraska and other parts of the region. They are harmless to humans, who can identify them by their bulging red eyes and relentless buzz saw of a mating call.

http://www.omaha.com/living/this-year-s-cicadas-underground-since-are-ready-to-make/article_5e4c8e78-8aee-54f1-ab6d-2510e1672f5e.html

POSTED: TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015 1:00 AM
By Blake Ursch / World-Herald staff writer

You’ll know they’re here by the song — a relentless, pulsing buzz so strong, you can feel it under your skin.

Follow it to a wooded area, ease toward a tree or shrub, and you might catch a glimpse of the singers — red-eyed, winged creatures — serenading the skies after almost two decades of silence beneath the earth.

These are not the dog-day cicadas you hear every year.

These bugs spend most of their lives underground, digging themselves out by the millions for a few weeks every 17 years to mate, reproduce and die. And this month, a horde of periodical cicadas is expected to emerge from the soil in southeast Nebraska and in regions of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

FULL story at link.

[Person 2713]

2. Forest abuzz -just dripping from the trees and I have heard tasty but I haven't got the nerve

to try them as a meal plus I'd rather just listen to them buzz away

[doc03]

3. They are due next year in eastern Ohio. If you are a fisherman

in cicada year you can have a ball catching carp on surface lures or shallow brown crank baits.

[progressoid]

4. Cat brought one of those in the house once.

LOUD!!!

[kentauros]

5. Cool :)

I love that evening sound. Anything to drown out the trains

[Recursion]

6. Bah. They're no Brood X (nt)

[XemaSab]

7. Still germane:

http://www.theonion.com/article/17-year-cicadas-horrified-to-learn-about-911-32341