From cicada donuts to a Vegas wedding?
The cicadas are here and these creative Virginian residents decided to make the most of it!
Oxana Ware, a photographer from Arlington, Virginia, has had a lot of fun with her themed cicada photoshoots. The bugs strung the up lights in a colorful Chistmas tree scene, celebrated a Vegas wedding, and even took on an adventurous snowy mountain climb!
On her musically-themed Instagram image she says:
"Not quite the Beetles but the soon-to-be-world-famous Buzz Killers are coming to your backyards soon! I love their songs and hope you enjoy them too"
One of Virgina's #HiddenGems this month is the Good Company in Arlington. If you're not keen to try eating a real cicada, but you want to say you did, you can grab a donut one instead. More creative and tastier than the crunchy version!
"The cicadas have landed at Good Company! Stop in during the month of June and try this cicada doughnut...you won't have another chance for 17 years!"
A Father and daughter team from Fairfax, Virginia have also had fun with Brood X. They've been encouraging live cicadas to be selfie-ready by providing some fun mini props. Scott and Ellie Kanowitz have photographed cicadas on police bikes, eating tiny hotdogs, and riding skateboards.
“It was also fun to try to get them to stay still and pick them up,” Ellie told WTOP News. “It was really fun to find the cicadas and put them in cars and stuff.”
Brood X, one of the largest periodical cicada broods in the world, have been underground for 17 years and, as they breed and then die within a few short weeks, will only last until around late June/ mid July.
The males unique mating song is quite spectacular (and loud) and, as long as you can handle being surrounded by hundreds of insects, is an incredible experience to witness. The cicadas are harmless and won't bite or damage crops, unlike locusts--although small new trees need protecting--so we can simply enjoy this rare phenomena.
Whether we're eating them, posing them for photos, or using them for artisitc inspiration like a group of kids in Virgina did for the Washington Post, we may as well have fun while they're here!
“This is a real treat. This is an unusual biological phenomenon. Periodical cicadas only occur in the eastern United States; they don’t occur anywhere else in the world,” Eric Day, an entomologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University extension, told CNN. “It’s just going to be an amazingly big, big show.”