Wednesday, June 5, 2013

No Cicadas Yet

The 2013 brood of the 17-year cicada has been getting quite a bit of coverage in the various news media. I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords, or I would if they would only arrive in the City of Y______.

For the record, I have only eaten two cicadas in my life. The first time I ate a cicada, I had been drinking copious amounts of beer at a friend's parents' house. Before leaving, I noticed a cicada on the screen of the kitchen door and mused, "I read that these things are edible." My friend, knowing me well, replied, "Oh, shit, you're really going to..." Before he could finish, I had grabbed the thing, which commenced to make a racket... which I stilled by biting its head off. If I had to describe the sensation of eating a cicada, I'd liken it to eating a celery-flavored M&M- crunchy candy shell and a "green" tasting interior. It was not bad at all. The second time I ate a cicada was in my own backyard. A bunch of my brother Vincenzo's classmates were staying at the family homestead, and we were cooking out on the patio. One of my brother's friends, a kid from Minnesota, had never encountered a cicada, so he was a bit put off at the sight of a bug the size of his thumb flying around. He said, "What the hell is that thing?" I told him, "It's a cicada, a big noisy bug that's not bad eating." With that, I caught the cicada, stuck it on a fork, grilled it, and ate it. My brother's friend turned as green as the cicada. Again, copious amounts of beer had been consumed. Now, regarding cicadas, I have to say, they're not bad, but I wouldn't bust my hump trying to catch enough to make a meal of. If I can grab one or two out of the billions that will be swarming, I would probably relive my entomophagous endeavors, but I'm not going to knock myself out chasing cicadas. For those of you who are cringing, and saying "How could you eat a bug like that?" I have this to say- if a shrimp crawled out from under your radiator, you'd smash it, but since it was pulled out of the ocean, you'd pay $16.99/lb for it? Really, a shrimp is just a sea bug... think of the cicada as a tree shrimp and munch away!

I have a wonderful co-worker, a soft-spoken, well-educated woman from Argentina who is not too keen on bugs, but her two awesome daughters are the sort of nerdy tomboys who are budding entomologists. Those girls love bugs, and mom is able to suppress her squeamishness really well for their sake. Of course, the two are kids after my own heart, and I am an enabler... I gave the girls a plant with a mantis ootheca and mom put it outside their house so they could watch for the emergence of the baby mantises. I also staked out a few milkweed plants for the girls so they can keep an eye out for monarch caterpillars. The girls and I are bug buddies, so to speak. While the girls were keenly looking forward to the impending cicada invasion, mom wasn't sharing their enthusiasm. I tried to mollify her dubious feelings about the bugs by telling her, "Well, they're as big as your thumb, they're green on top and white on the bottom, and they are extremely noisy... just think of them as flying frogs and you won't be quite so freaked out."

10 comments:

Smut Clyde said...

a shrimp is just a sea bug... think of the cicada as a tree shrimp and munch away!

Also too -- shrimps and lobsters and such as are garbage eaters (so a significant amount of what's inside the shell is garbage being processed plus the machinery for processing it), whereas your adult cicada is living on a refined diet of sap and fat reserves.

BDR said...

Here is DC we were promised a large brood. Now we're being told nope. Supposedly the below average temperature Spring pissed off the cicadas and they've said fuck it.

mikey said...

Umm.

I'm the first to admit that I might be a little fuzzy on the scriptures, but I don't think you are supposed to be rooting for a plague of locusts.

I think it annoys the holy ghost...

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I still haven't tried a thistle. I don't expect to try cicada any time soon...
~

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

shrimps and lobsters and such as are garbage eaters (so a significant amount of what's inside the shell is garbage being processed plus the machinery for processing it),


Based on what we learn every day about Monsanto and ADM and such as, humans are also.

In the zompocalypse, The Bastard is probably one of the few (aside from zoms, of course) that are prepared for the diet.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Bugs and weeds, that is.

kennymfg said...

The 17 year brood that emerged in Chicago in 1990 was an incredible sight to behlod. I witnessed several people eating them but wasn't up to it myself. The 2007 brood was considerably less impressive and I didn't eat any then either. Maybe I'll just gird myself up for 2024...

The northern Illinois brood, which will emerge in late May 2024, has a reputation for the largest emergence of cicadas known anywhere. This is due to the size of the emergence and the research and subsequent reporting over the years by entomologists Monte Lloyd and Henry Dybas at the Field Museum in Chicago. During the 1956 emergence, they counted an average of 311 nymphal emergence holes per square yard of ground in a forested floodplain near Chicago. This translates to 1½ million cicadas per acre. In upland sites, they recorded 27 emergence holes per square yard, translating to about 133,000 per acre. This number is more typical of emergence numbers but is still a tremendous number of insects. For comparison, a city block contains about 3½ acres. When the cicadas start dying and dropping from the trees later in the spring, there are large numbers on the ground, and the odor from their rotting bodies is noticeable. In 1990, there were reports from people in Chicago having to use snow shovels to clear their sidewalks of the dead cicadas.

Smut Clyde said...

The Bastard is probably one of the few [...] that are prepared for the diet.

I'm sure he is reassured to know that he will taste better than the rest of us.

Patricia said...

Man, you really are BAD! I could never! I am in South Jersey and haven't seen one cicada. I hear tell they are north of us. Anyway, when I was a kid, we used to use the shells they would leave behind after they dried their wings and flew off. We would decorate our mud pies with these "ghost" cicadas. I always loved their singing. But eating them?

Helmut Monotreme said...

And if Lobsters lived on land, I'm pretty sure you could use them as an ironclad defense in cases of arson. e.g.:
"Your honor, I'm sorry I burned down city hall, but I thought I saw a lobster"
"Case dismissed"