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Tuesday / 1 June 2004
- The tornadoes are not the only natural phenomenon getting attention in Kentucky these days. After their usual seventeen-year absence, the cicadas are back. I remember them appearing when I was a child when I would collect their empty shells after they would molt, but it seems the numbers of insects are greater this time.
 Each female cicada lays batches of 10-15 eggs under the bark of tree limbs. The eggs mature there for 10-12 weeks, and then after the larvae emerge, they fall to the ground where they burrow into the dirt to remain for seventeen years, feeding on tree roots.
 No one knows how cicadas calculate the passage of seventeen years, but in the appointed year, once the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees, they emerge to mate and lay eggs in a ten week life span, starting the cycle over again.
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