Dedicated to cicadas, the most amazing insects in the world.
I’ve made Christmas lights, in the past, from plastic cicada whistles from Australia.
This year I tried something new and used real cicada exuvia (skins/shells) and LED “fairie lights”, which seem to run cool enough that they won’t be a hazard to the fragile skins. They look pretty. I’m still in the testing phase, but the results so far look promising.
I made cicada Christmas lights using some LED USB Christmas lights, and some plastic cicada whistles from Australia. The song of cicadas heralds the Christmas season in many countries in the southern hemisphere like Australia.
CicadaMania Cicada Christmas Lights from Cicada Mania on Vimeo.
CicadaMania Cicada Christmas Lights from Cicada Mania on Vimeo.
Bonus Christmas Cicada stuff:
There is a cicada nicknamed the Kobonga Christmas Clanger in Australia (thx David Marshall and Kathy Hill ):
How about a cicada Christmas Wreath? This wreath was made by Jenny Pate back in 2004.
Or a Cicada Christmas Card from Sam Orr:
Update:
I received my Cicada Princess clay cicada that was an actual actor/actress in the movie:
And here’s the URL to the movie: www.cicadaprincess.com
Here’s some news for cicada fanatics: the movie Cicada Princess has officially wrapped post production and was and successfully submitted it for consideration to the Sundance Film Festival. Read more about it. Congratulations to film maker Mauricio Baiocchi.
The Cicada Princess is a stop-motion animated movie featuring anthropomorphic cicadas. It was funded via Kickstarter contributions. Visit the Cicada Princess website. Here at Cicada Mania, we’re interested in both real and fictional cicadas.
You can see the latest 500 cicada sightings on magicicada.org. Visit their “2011 Brood XIX sightings” map. The latest reports are from Illinois and Missouri.
The latest Science Cabaret Podcast is about cicadas, and in particular, the relationship of birds and cicadas. The podcast features Dr. Walt Koenig and is hosted by Dr. Holly.
I enjoyed this blog post Kingdom of the Cicadas. It features photos and videos of the emergence from Joplin, Missouri.
There were a lot of news stories about Sparky’s Ice Cream shop in Columbia, Missouri, and their cicada ice cream. After reading dozens of articles, it seems that they only made one batch, and the local heath official(s) only advised them not to make the ice cream, but did not specifically or legally stop them from making it.
Related… cicada pie, pizza and tacos courtesy of the University of Maryland’s PDF cookbook. The cookbook is circa 2004 (Brood X) but they still work.
Christmas gives me a chance to use this image of a (cartoon) cicada nymph drinking the fluids of a Christmas tree.
