EVERY 17 YEARS

  We have albino and "regular" but when the albino ones dry out, they get to be dark.

This one looks like it has stunted wings, but it may be they're not dry yet.

They're everywhere. They are very noisy flyers, and very noisy singers. The funny thing is that their songs are not all at the same pitch. You can hear different tones, and the noise is in waves. Interestingly, some areas have no cicada sounds, while the next set of trees is full of cicadas. Why?

They stop singing at night, but start again as soon as it's dawn. It's really a racket!  We can hear them through the closed windows! Makes it hard to hear yourself think.

The ground around my garden looks like Swiss cheese where they came out. The birds & squirrels (!) are having a field day. We even had seagulls here, and we're 10 miles from the lake!

The cicadas are supposed to like maple and oak trees, which we have in abundance, but they've been in my shrubs, too. They have slit branches to the point where 6-8 inch sections fall off. They get down my shirt and in my hair when I'm gardening. They splat into the fish pond. They die by the billions all over the ground, their "shells" stick to leaves and trees, & they smell TERRIBLE!

And we won't see them again for 17 more years.