WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- Brood X, the latest generation of 17-year cyclical cicadas, has descended upon the nation's capital. Residents are hearing the droning buzz of the bug's mating call, but businesses in the area are hearing the ka-ching of the cash register as cicada craze merchandise, well, flies off the shelves.
At the University of Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., the campus bookstore offers two cicada-themed T-shirts at $14.99 each. One, designed by the Department of Entomology (dedicated to the study of insects) features a large cicada, wings spread, looking eerily like the logo for the 1991 movie "Silence of the Lambs."
The other was designed by the bookstore, and features the Terrapin mascot putting the insects in their place by grabbing, chewing, and stomping on them. "Don't fear the cicada," the shirt proclaims, making reference to the university's "Fear the Turtle" school spirit slogan.
Both shirts have been doing "very, very well," according to bookstore General Manager Stan Lohman. "We were being optimistic about the sales, and (the shirts' popularity) has taken us by surprise."
The number of shirts sold on the campus of 30,000 is "real close to 1,000," Lohman said.
Lohman compared the popularity of the cicada tees to shirts commemorating the school's Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball championship win over arch-rival Duke on March 14.
"That was a big event, because we haven't won an ACC championship in, like, a bajillion years. The number of cicada T-shirts is about half as much" as the ACC championship shirt sales, Lohman said, which is significant at such a basketball-crazy school.
"That's really surprising for, you know, bugs."
According to Lohman, the idea for the shirts was born in the Department of Entomology, where the T-shirts were sold to raise money for the department. But orders for the shirts "got to be a bit much," to the point where graduate students couldn't handle shipping the shirts and making time to complete their schoolwork. The bookstore took over, while still promising $5 of each sale to the entomologists.
With the success of that shirt, the bookstore team decided to design its own shirt and came up with "Don't fear the cicada," which the university's licensing department approved.
Lohman said both shirts are selling equally well.
Other cicada shirt merchants reported similar successes. Through the central N.J.-based Cicadamania.com Web site, consumers can buy Brood X merchandise specific to their affected home state, or get more general "My noisy cicada wedding" or "Cicada Mania 2004 World Tour" shirts, wall clocks, and coffee mugs. The products range in price from $10.99 to $19.99.
Cicadamania.com has been on the Web since 1996, and has been hawking merchandise since late 2000, founder Dan Mozgai said. The decision to supply cicada products was natural, he continued, because "people have been asking for T-shirts all along," he said.
He added that selling the merchandise is easy because he uses Cafepress.com, a Web site dedicated to taking people's graphic designs and printing and shipping the various products.
The Cicada Mania category of products is one of the top ten best sellers on Cafepress.com, Mozgai said
"This is absolutely phenomenal," Mozgai said. "It's the first time we won't have a loss on operating costs for the Web site."
Mozgai added that most of the orders are coming from Md., Washington D.C., and Va., with one-fifth of the total orders coming from Md. "That area was the quickest-hit, so that makes sense," he said.
Besides the T-shirt cash-in, however, Washington-area residents are taking the cicada invasion in stride, and there are no discernable positive or negative effects on business.
Susan Aste, a visitor specialist from the District of Columbia Tourism Department, said with a laugh that the cicadas were not affecting tourism to the area.
This despite the dark stains on the sidewalk along H St., behind the White House, where cicadas were squashed.
And as for other businesses, D.C. Chamber of Commerce Director of Communications said in an e-mail: "The Chamber represents more than 2,000 businesses, many of which are in the hospitality industry that could be impacted by the cicadas. We also have several members whose work is outdoors, in construction contacting engineering, and so on. We have not received any complaints or concerns about the cicadas and their impact on business."
This seemed to be the case at Equinox restaurant on Connecticut Ave., which has an outdoor patio. Hostesses Lindsey Gowin and Vanessa Blaney said the perennial problems of allergy-inducing pollen and oppressive heat and humidity deter customers from eating outside more than the cicadas do.
"Everyone was requesting to sit outside today," Blaney said, "but they do comment on the noise (from the cicadas) once they're sitting out there."
Outdoor concert-goers will not be deterred, either. The Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, in Va., holds concerts outside every summer, but a representative said the venue is making no special changes because of the cicadas.
The area has been preparing for and hyping the invasion of the inch-and-a-half, red-eyed critters for several weeks.
"Every 17 years, in late May, thousands of periodical cicadas make a simultaneous appearance in parts of the eastern United States. In 2004, this will happen in Md., the District of Columbia, eastern Penn., Ohio, Ky. Ind. and Tenn.," Dr. Gene Kritsky, a professor of biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph, wrote in a news release. He wrote that they emerge to feed and mate, but die within a month of appearing.
According to Kritsky, they do not sting or bite humans, and have minimal effect on trees and plants.
