OT: THEY are here...

[dogscoff]

I like Cicadas. They remind me that I'm somewhere hot and exotic (because we don't get them at home).

As far as using genetic engineering to kill bugs, it can be done. I heard somewhere that it's being used to reduce mosquito populations in malarial areas: They tweak the genes or something to produce male mozzies that are firing blanks and release them into the local mozzie population.

These males then go and make the twelve-legged beast with female mozzies in the area. The females are then happy, thinking they've got a load of fertilised eggs ready to lay, so they refuse any further mating and then lay their eggs. Then (such is the life-cycle of a mosquito) they fall over dead.

Of course the eggs they laid are sterile and so the year's mating season was a complete waste for those females that mated with the GE mozzies, and the number of new bugs hatched that year is greatly reduced.