Cicadas give many 17-year itch

CINCINNATI, May 18 (UPI) -- More than 800 sightings of red-eyed, waxy winged 17-year cicadas have been reported in the Cincinnati-area and the swarm is yet to come, officials said.

"They came in slowly because of the cool temperatures Saturday but the rain really helped," Gene Kritsky, an insect expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. Kritsky says millions of the cicadas will be burrowing out of the ground this weekend and the population won't peak until early June.

Cicadas are tasty to animals, birds and other predators and their only defense is numbers. There are literally billions of them, as many as 1.5 million per acre in heaviest concentrations, and all they want to do is mate and lay eggs for the next emergence in 2021.

The 17-year cicadas, called Brood X, are emerging in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois this spring.