OT: THEY are here...

[General Woundwort]

Well, I'm back from my trip to San Antonio (another topic in itself), and Brood X is out in full force. (They actually were starting to emerge when I left Monday morning.) A few observations...

1) they are exactly as big, ugly, and stupid as advertised. Counting the wings, they are about as long as your thumb. Big, bulging red eyes. Despite having such large eyes, they routinely fly into things (trees, branches, telephone poles, you) that are in their bumbling way. When they hit something, they drop to the ground and sit there. The roads in my subdivision are covered with flattened cicadas.

2) They droning sound they make (which goes on 24/7) sounds very much like a raygun from one of those old 1950's UFO movies.

[primitive]

But how does they taste ?

Do you have the willpower to let such an oportunity pass ?

[General Woundwort]

Oh, YES, I do. I don't need protein that badly.

[Arkcon]

Heads up. I read on the wierd news that some guy got real sick eating just a few. Seems he knew he had a shellfish allergy, but didn't make the correct connection...

Shrimp, lobster = marine arthropod
Crayfish = aquatic arthropod
Cicada = terrestrial arthropod

Don't snack if you can't handle it.

[ May 21, 2004, 15:15: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Ed Kolis]

Cicadas? Oh, they're just the XiChung invasion force coming to enslave Earth... remember that part in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" where the entire battle fleet got swallowed by a small dog?

[rdouglass]

Originally posted by Arkcon:

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
We could box them up and ship them to China. I hear that the Chinese think they are tasty! I wonder how much we could get per pound?

I often wonder why some entrepreneur doesn't get into this sort of animal husbandry. I heard that some grasshoppers being sold in local stores in southwestern US for comsumption were contaminated with dangerous levels of lead. If someone in the midwest farmed them in an enclosure, fed them clean grain stalks, froze and shipped them out in colorful packaging... So what if it never sold to Americans, we could be on the threshold of a lucrative foreign market.

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It's a little OT, but a woman in my area has quite a lucrative business selling dragonfly larvae as natural mosquito control. With the West Nile Virus and all, she can't harvest enough for the orders and she's charging top dollar. I wonder if there's a natural predetor of cicada...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by rdouglass:
I wonder if there's a natural predetor of cicada...

Well, pretty much everything kills them. But there is the Cicada Killer Wasp that's even named after them.