Cicada ManiaThe Brood X: Year of the Cicada movie is playing noon Monday (3/20) in the Charles Sumner Museum and Archives, 1201 17th St, N.W., Washington, D.C. (the address has been updated).
A story about the movie in the Gazette.net (thanks Dan Threadwell).
Another article in the Washington Post (thanks Roy Troutman).
The movie features about 15 minutes of Roy Troutman’s cicada footage.
If someone gets to see it, let us know.
I came across this article thanks to Google’s news alerts: UC Engineering Researchers Find Mercury In Cicadas. I’ve never eaten a cicada and I don’t plan on doing so in the future, but a lot of “cicada maniacs” do, so here’s your PSA.
Think twice before you eat one of Cincinnati’s Brood-X cicadas. That’s the warning from researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering, who have found surprising levels of mercury in these insects.
Way back in July a man by the name of Samuel Orr mailed me a DVD trailer of a film he had a part in making called Return of the 17-Year Cicadas. At the time my reaction was “I am simply blown away by its excellence. That might be the best cicada video I’ve seen so far”. Somehow I let it slip through the cracks and I forgot to write about it. In the mean time the movie has won first prize in the Non-Interactive Media category of the 2005 Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. I’m sure once the film reaches a wider audience — perhaps PBS or the Animal Planet channel (hint! hint!) — it will win more awards.
Read all about the new, award winning cicada documentary Return of the 17-Year Cicadas on the excellent EurekAlert! Science Reporting Alert website. Make sure you download and watch the video too. It is incredible.
Thanks to Roy and Dona for reminding me to post something about this film.
Cicada Songs (for “Cicada Mania”)
They say your songs
portend the end of summer
just as chirping robins
usher in the spring air.
Listen to the sound
whirring, buzzing through
leaves of trees that shelter
the thrumming brood.
Insect monks chant
hymns of nature
for us and for
their silent females: “mate her.”
More musical than electric currents
that hum along power lines,
your symphony hovers,
guarding the sultry night like armored palatines.
Constant and pervasive,
we humans sometimes hear
sometimes ban your frequencies,
lulled to sleep by drums so dear.
Air conditioners and headphones
drown out your beautiful noise
but others sing with you
till Fall’s frost steals these little joys.
-DFG
In October 2005 the 6th International Film Festival of Insects (FIFI) will be held in Prades France.
From the FIFI homepage:
Since 1995, OPIE-LR (Office for the Insects and their Environment in Languedoc-Roussillon) has organized the International Festival of Film on Insects every two years.
This 6th biennial event will take place from 5th to 9th October 2005 in Prades (Pyrénées Orientales) in southern France.
FIFI is a cultural, educational, scientific and convivial feast with an international dimension. This year it occurs in a unique natural site: Canigou mountain, which has 7 Nature Reserves and the Regional Natural Park of Pyrénées Catalanes
Director Rohit Colin Rao is getting set to release his documentary Brood X: Year of the Cicada. The documentary focuses on the Brood X emergence of last year. The trailer looks awesome.
Speaking of Brood X, I found a home movie from 2004 on the Internet Archive: Cicadas in Cincinnati, May 2004.
There are many nicknames for cicadas. Periodic cicadas (17-year/13-year Magicicadas) are often called Locusts. Annual, summertime cicadas (primarily Tibicens) are called Jar Fly or Jarfly, Harvest Fly or “Dog Day” cicada depending on what part of the USA you’re from.
I found this site which provides guesses at the entomology of Jar Fly:
One is that when you catch one and hold it in your hand it “jars” or vibrates. The other thought is that the nickname came from the constant singing that might “jar” or unsettle some people’s nerves who are not accustomed to hearing it for hours on end.
My uneducated guess would be that kids catch them and put them in jars, hence “jar fly”.
Thanks to Becky for asking about Jarflies.
These sort of things disgust me, but I’m posting it anyway.
Four cups of chopped rhubarb, 1 cup of fresh cicadas, washed and any hard parts removed; 1&1/3 cups white sugar, 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour, 1tablespoon butter, and a 9-inch double crust pie crust.
You’ll find the rest of the recipe in this article from the Arizona Republic: Answering bug query is easy as pie.
From this article in the Shippensberg Sentinel:
Jake Crider takes a bite of a chocolate-covered cicadas. He has kept a container of pre-cooked, frozen periodical cicadas that he harvested last year.
Here’s a review for a Japanese Anime titled Human Crossing: the Cicadas of Winter. From the review, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with cicadas, but I’m posting the link anyway.