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It's About to Get Noisy...Here Come the Cicadas

It's About to Get Noisy...Here Come the Cicadas
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By West Kentucky Star Staff
May. 06, 2015 | PADUCAH, KY
By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 06, 2015 | 09:31 AM | PADUCAH, KY
Sometime in late May or early June, billions of noisy, red-eyed bugs will be burrowing up from underground lairs where they've laid in waiting for 13 years, and our region is right in the middle of these millions of cicadas per acre that will screech their mating calls at a volume that can literally rival a rock concert.







Western Kentucky and southern Illinois will experience the re-emergence of "Brood XXIII," or the Lower Mississippi Valley Brood.  These bugs are at their thickest in western Kentucky and southern Illinois, as well as Indiana's Wabash River area.  The rest of the brood extends southward along the Mississippi River into west Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. (Links to brood maps are at the bottom of this article.)







The most recent local cicada invasion occurred in 2011, when "Brood XIX" appeared.  Also known as the Great Southern Brood, that swarm covered most of Illinois and Missouri, western Kentucky, middle Tennessee, and parts of all southern states except Florida.  Those cicadas won't reappear until 2024.







A cicada's life is loud and hectic after all those silent years underground, just one cicada approaching 100 decibels (about the same amount of noise as a lawn mower).  Billions of the bugs dig out simultaneously, climb nearby tree trunks and shed their exoskeletons.  They quickly grow to about an inch in length, including large wings that help them fly into the treetops and sing for a mate.  It's the male cicada that does all the screeching, while the female barely clicks her wings.







The deafening noise is over in a matter of weeks after most of the cicadas breed and die off, or get eaten by feasting birds and animals.  Cicadas do not bite or harm people, but enough female cicadas cutting into branches to lay eggs can possibly damage or kill a tree.







Kentucky is also home to annual cicadas, those that come out every summer.  But while the periodical 13- and 17-year species emerge in May, annual cicadas come out later in the summer.  Annual cicadas are also known as "dog day" cicadas.











On the Net:

Cicadas of Kentucky
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