This is a 17 year brood, supposed to be one of the largest ever. In the next 2 weeks they will surface, great bait for fishing and the birds feast on them.

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Yeah, I saw they are due out in a few days.

I'm not looking forward to this. Those things are a fucking nuisance.

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You know me like that.

Life absolutely booms in the animal world when these things come out of the ground, providing basically unlimited protein.

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At age 61 one starts setting O/U's on how many more championships, Popes, and broods one will see in one's lifetime.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

I'll trust UofI and wait to be outraged for another 3 years.

I love the Loud Album from Brood XIII. It's a classic.

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You know me like that.

My experience with cicada hatches is they never are where I am at for whatever reason. See on the next them crawling all over the place and not a one beyond the normal cicada population where ever I am. Always been a bit of a disappointment. Ill wait till next brood I guess.

You're lucky.

A large brood will make you insane.

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You know me like that.

Thanks Chemlawn? I don't know why its the case. Now that I live in farmland area its really not surprise but when I lived in vicinity of the Fox river it was a damn forest practically. Maybe the soil was too clay laden for them to do well or something. Might just be a hoax like snipe hunting (Although I did see a snipe yesterday.)

The most I cicadas I can recall came out about 13 years ago iirc. I remember them being all over the place when we were pushing our daughter in a stroller through the Brookfield Zoo.

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Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.- JD Vance
If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn’t be pardoned.- JD Vance on the J-6 insurrectionists

That's got the stink of Brood XIII all over it.

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You know me like that.

I love the background noise they make. Fantastic. It's funny to watch the gulls come in and feast on them, though I chase them away. Other birds, fine.

There's a great joke about 17-year cicadas and neighborhood racial change.

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I forgot about the gulls. Last year we had flocks of seagulls (and members...) aggressively circling the neighborhood. If this year is what’s been forecast, I’m assuming everything will be covered in bird shit.

As an aside...I did a little project last week that required me to bore under a sidewalk for some death defying DIY electrical work. In the process I found dozens of cicada larvae. It was a tiny area. As somebody who hates bugs, I’m terrified for what’s to come.

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The gulls go block by block. It's amazing to see.

I hate bugs, too, but cicadas are cool. They're like lightning bugs--just a cool bug and not gross. Strange-looking, but won't bother you at all.

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Are you hearing-impaired?

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You know me like that.

The sound of the annual cicadas is a great sound. Im not sure the plague amplified version would be nearly as pleasant.

It’s only great because it drowns out the random volume of the crickets which can be distracting.

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You know me like that.

How do you feel about centipedes? And Cepedes?

Proudly hate centipedes. Very optimistic on Yoelqui Céspedes.

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Not the shrill, saw-like, eardrum-piercing noise they make, but that pleasant background hum that can only be produced by millions of cicadas and which sounds more like a soothing version of the noise produced by the tv when you'd turn the bottom dial from 32 to 44 when it was time for Speed Racer or Voltron. It's pleasing to the ear.

The jump from 32 to 44 wasn't too bad: two twists of the wrist and you were there. But if you had to go back to 26, that sucked. It was like you were standing there all day, and if you were too lazy to turn, readjust, turn, readjust, and turn once again, you'd hurt your freaking wrist by extending it to the suicide position. When I was eight, I was pitching and felt a twinge in my wrist, and I attributed it to my attempts to change the bottom dial in one motion. Still, the staccato, machine-gun sound of rapidly changing UHF channels was kind of nice.

Itzhak Perlman looked like he could have been a Sweathog. Anyone who doesn't think that the theme song for Welcome Back, Kotter isn't in the top ten theme songs is a mental midget.

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Saw my first one yesterday, they are starting to emerge.

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i thought the chicago cicadas weren't coming out until 2024??

i remember 1990. that would mean 2007, which seems right...and then, 2024??

Don’t we get cicadas every year?

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I'm not saying I enjoy them... I honestly see them as "white' background noise, but I've always equated them with warm summers. I like warmth.

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Certified Dirty Old Man

I've been working for two weeks to setup our backyard for Dr. Ken Jr. II's graduation with his buddies.

All I need to know is - will I require a flame-thrower.

Because I will have one to fire up the smoker....and keep a crowd of teenagers in line.

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You know me like that.

They appear to follow the same "relevancy" timeline as the Chicago White Sox.

That depends. Will the in laws be there? If so, then probably not.

Will Seacrest be there? If so, then yes.

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Watching the Memorial on the Golf Channel now, and you can hear the bastards!!!

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins