Dave Fox's Outbursts!

Cicada Update

I talked on the phone this morning with my mom in Maryland. She held the phone outside the kitchen door so I could hear how loud they are. Those damn bugs never shut up! They are like the Backstreet Boys of the insect world. My mom has promised to send me her cicada shell collection.

My sister-in-law, Carly, told me last week that they are stupid bugs. This is an odd comment coming from Carly, who is usually a very open-minded person. But she says they don't really know how to fly, so they bump into people a lot.

Meanwhile, a guy named Jaques Tiziou has just published a cicada cookbook. Jacques Tiziou. Hmmm... sounds like more French cuisine.

Insect Porn

Millions of cicadas are attacking the east coast of the United States, and I am sad that I’m missing the action. I grew up in Maryland, one of the states where the cicadas are partying, but the last time they graced us with their presence, in 1987, I had just moved to Norway.

For those of you who do not live in the 12 states where cicadas are on tour right now, here’s what we are missing:

Cicadas are bugs that live odd but fascinating lives. Once they hatch from their Mama Cicada’s eggs, they crawl underground and stay there for 17 years. When I look back on my adolescence, I wish I had had the sense to do that myself.

Eventually the cicadas reach puberty. They dig their way back to the surface of Planet Earth, and, well… you know how 17-year-olds are. They have only one thing on their minds: kinky, nasty, hot and sweaty cicada copulation. So they start flirting with each other.

According to nationalgeographic.com, the boy cicadas hit on the girl cicadas by “flying to a sunny tree and, with thousands of their buddies, beating out a tune on their undersides.”

Beating out a tune on their undersides. So that’s what they’re calling it these days.

If a girl cicada spots a boy cicada who she thinks is hot, she flicks her wings and bats her eyelashes. The amorous couple then goes to work, creating lots of baby cicadas. When they’re finished having sex, the boy cicada keels over and dies, and the girl cicada smokes a cigarette. Then, she lays about 600 eggs and also dies. A few weeks later, the eggs hatch, and the baby cicadas burrow underground to hide from the world until their first wet dream 17 years later.