Cicadas!

 Much to the envy of bug watchers everywhere, the DC area was recently a focal point for the emergence of Brood X cicadas!  This brood of cicadas emerges only once every 17 years, so for a bug event, this one was big.

As anyone who has ever lived with me can attest, I'm not really a bug person.  Cicadas, though, are one of the few bugs I actually do like.  They don't bite or sting, they're too big to fly into your eye or up your nose, and I'm fascinated by the varieties that spend years at a time underground.

The coverage of their 2021 emergence started many weeks ahead of time.  There was much hand-wringing by people who lived in the area in 2004, when they last emerged, and didn't enjoy them that time.  They were delayed in emerging due to a snap of unseasonably cold weather, and when they finally did, I was pretty underwhelmed and disappointed at first.  For all the coverage, I was expecting a Big Event, and I felt like I was mostly seeing a few stray wings on the ground.

They picked up as time went on, though.  I never felt like they were that numerous where we lived, but they were very thick on the ground (and in the sky and the trees) near one of the schools where I worked.  Walking to the bus stop at the end of the day made me feel like I'd gotten a true cicada immersion experience, between the deafening humming as I walked under trees, and cicadas actually landing on me from time to time.

Here are a few pictures to commemorate Brood X of 2021, along with a cicada necklace I made to welcome them in style!