Last year was supposed to be the great 17 year mass cicada emergence across the Midwest and East coast. In our part of Indiana we only saw one cicada shell and heard none of the loud insects. Within the last two weeks we have heard a lot of cicadas at night. We have found four of them on the tires of our vehicle. One is in the photo, above. They missed the big show by a year…
cicada life cycle
Brood X cicada invasion is in our backyard
Ok, maybe one cicada sighting doesn’t rate “invasion”, but we have been waiting for these ugly things to emerge. Brood X is the designation given to this bunch of cicadas, who have been underground for 17 years. You can read all about them just about everywhere.
It was long after dark when we spotted one hanging on a tarp that we had over some stuff on a couple of card tables. The cicada is crawling out of its now hard shell.
Starting to leave its shell
Doing a back bend to get out
This morning the cicada was beside its now abandoned shell. Usually they are on tree trunks at this point, but this guy ended up on a green tarp.
Finally free, its just chilling
Side view: you can see details of the cicada and its abandoned shell
Like I said, we’ve been waiting for the cicadas to emerge. The weather has been hot enough that the soil should have been warm enough a couple of days ago. Oh well, at least things are starting to happen. It will remain to be seen how many cicadas will emerge in our yard, or in our town. And maybe this one we have will start producing that loud obnoxious sound today.
Roadtirement 