OT: THEY are here...

[AMF]

Well, but also not all Cicadas come out only every 17 years. It's just that the VAST majority do. I remmber every summer growing up in Tucson we;d have some amount of Cicadas on the trees. We did terrible things to the little buggers...tie a string around them and just let them fly in circles forever...we were brutal kids I guess...

Originally posted by Arkcon:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kamog:
What I find interesting is, why do ALL the cicadas of the same species happen to follow the exact same 17-year life cycle? Why aren't the life cycles staggered so that each year, some of them emerge from the ground, finishing their 17-year periods? Why are they so syncronized? So at any given time, all the cicadas alive are exactly the same age!

I wonder how it all got started in the beginning.

This is common in the natural world. Randomly spaced "bumper crops" followed by low years so predators don't overwhelm the prey. Happens with acorns, cherries, and in this case Brood X {wiki}

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[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by alarikf:
We did terrible things to the little buggers...tie a string around them and just let them fly in circles forever...we were brutal kids I guess...

Not as brutal as my brother and I were...We used to play baseball with Frogs. We had this really big one and we named him Bubba, but my brother had me throw him to him and he then took a swing at him. We were evil...

[mottlee]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

quote:

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Originally posted by alarikf:
We did terrible things to the little buggers...tie a string around them and just let them fly in circles forever...we were brutal kids I guess...

Not as brutal as my brother and I were...We used to play baseball with Frogs. We had this really big one and we named him Bubba, but my brother had me throw him to him and he then took a swing at him. We were evil...

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Can you say .....SPLAT!

[AMF]

Dude! harsh! can you say Beavis & Butthead?

Originally posted by Ragnarok:

quote:

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Originally posted by alarikf:
We did terrible things to the little buggers...tie a string around them and just let them fly in circles forever...we were brutal kids I guess...

Not as brutal as my brother and I were...We used to play baseball with Frogs. We had this really big one and we named him Bubba, but my brother had me throw him to him and he then took a swing at him. We were evil...

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[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by alarikf:
Dude! harsh! can you say Beavis & Butthead?

Indeed! I still cannot believe we did such things, we were not brought up like that.

[ April 23, 2004, 18:45: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]

[General Woundwort]

Well, I'm back from my trip to San Antonio (another topic in itself), and Brood X is out in full force. (They actually were starting to emerge when I left Monday morning.) A few observations...

1) they are exactly as big, ugly, and stupid as advertised. Counting the wings, they are about as long as your thumb. Big, bulging red eyes. Despite having such large eyes, they routinely fly into things (trees, branches, telephone poles, you) that are in their bumbling way. When they hit something, they drop to the ground and sit there. The roads in my subdivision are covered with flattened cicadas.

2) They droning sound they make (which goes on 24/7) sounds very much like a raygun from one of those old 1950's UFO movies.

[primitive]

But how does they taste ?

Do you have the willpower to let such an oportunity pass ?

[General Woundwort]

Oh, YES, I do. I don't need protein that badly.

[Arkcon]

Heads up. I read on the wierd news that some guy got real sick eating just a few. Seems he knew he had a shellfish allergy, but didn't make the correct connection...

Shrimp, lobster = marine arthropod
Crayfish = aquatic arthropod
Cicada = terrestrial arthropod

Don't snack if you can't handle it.

[ May 21, 2004, 15:15: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Ed Kolis]

Cicadas? Oh, they're just the XiChung invasion force coming to enslave Earth... remember that part in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" where the entire battle fleet got swallowed by a small dog?