Midwest Bracing For Cicada Invasion

"Brood XIII" Set To Emerge In Force For First Time In 17 Years

(AP)  Coming soon: Brood XIII. It sounds like a bad horror movie. But it's actually the official name of the billions of periodical cicadas expected to emerge this month in parts of the Midwest after spending 17 years underground.

The red-eyed, shrimp-sized, flying insects don't bite or sting. But they are known for mating calls that produce such a din as to overpower ringing telephones, lawn mowers and power tools.

As nymphs burrowing underground, cicadas suck sap from tree roots. Almost all members of a group, or brood, burst from the ground within a couple days of each other.

They quickly climb the nearest vertical surface to molt and unroll their wings. In some heavily wooded areas, as many as 1.5 million cicadas per acre will crowd onto trees, expert say.

"It's one of the greatest insect emergences on Earth," said Daniel Summers, an entomologist at The Field Museum.

Brood XIII is expected across northern Illinois, and in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Cicadas live only about 30 days as adults, and their main goal is mating.

A single male's shrill courtship call can reach 90 decibels, equivalent to a kitchen blender. And THAT is scaring some people who have outdoor events planned for the next few weeks.

Ravinia Festival, an 103-year-old music festival held north of Chicago, "counterprogrammed" its schedule to avoid classical musicians having to compete with the insects, said festival president and CEO Welz Kauffman.

June will see more pop bands outdoors, a few concerts moved indoors, and a visit from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. "With 350 voices on stage, they can hold their own against the bugs," Kauffman said.

At the Chicago Botanic Garden down the road, spokeswoman Gloria Ciaccio joked that her advice for brides holding outdoor weddings there will be to put the tent flaps down, and turn the music up.

In Lake Geneva, Wis., hotel concierge Pat Sheahan is worried that no one will sign up for her walks around the lake.

"If these babies are going to be bugging the heck of out everybody, that's no good," she said.

And one Illinois company that provides ice sculptures has turned down several outdoor parties over the next month. That's because of what happened when owner Jim Nadeau delivered a swan statue to a wedding in 1990, during the area's last emergence of the periodical cicadas.

"We put our tray down and immediately the cicadas came off the ground and attacked the ice. Literally, it was a moving sculpture, this big black ugly mass of cicadas constantly moving," said Nadeau, who owns Nadeau Ice Sculptures of Forest Park.

"I don't want to talk myself out of work, but that was just too gross," he said.