Cicada Sludge?

Almost a year ago, the news buzz began on the Cicada Invasion we were expecting.  As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, they run in cycles.  The XIX Brood is a 13 year cycle and the XIII is 17 years.  As luck would have it, they will both hit us this summer.  I was reading about the emergence in Missouri today where the experts say ALL of the cicadas have now surfaced and will probably be around for 6 weeks or so taking them into July.

I haven’t seen any here but we’re all bracing for the unknown.  While they do munch on plant-life, I was surprised to read that they are generally NOT considered “pests” and they said there’s no reason to blast them with pesticide.  My only expectation is that I think they’ll be fascinating for a few days, then after a few weeks they’ll go back into hibernation as the cycle continues.

This week, I read a story about the Mormon cricket invasion that’s happening in Las Vegas.  As you know, Nevada is a desert so it takes something pretty hearty to survive there but these crickets are tough.  Utah is nearby and getting the same number of Mormon crickets.  To combat these critters, Utah brought in thousands of sea gulls decades ago.  I think the sea gull is even the state bird of Utah.  They eat crickets, grass hoppers and other crop munching bugs.

Back to Nevada – they’ve had car accidents caused by “cricket sludge”.  There are so many bugs on the roads that when you squish a few zillion of them at a time, it creates an oil slick that causes car accidents.  Let’s hope we don’t hit cicada numbers like that here.  Have you seen any yet?