NEW YORK ¨C ¡°And there it was, its beady, blood-red eyes glaring up from the sidewalk, a threat of shrieking hell to come.¡±
That¡¯s how Ashley Halsey III reported the re-advent of 17-year cicadas (Magicicada) for The Washington Post (¡°Those beady-eyed bugs are back: Cicadas spotted in Northern Virginia,¡± May 12, 2013). He went on to call cicadas ¡°ugly bugs.¡±
Do cicadas create a shrieking hell? Are they ugly? Halsey III was describing the periodical cicadas whose ¡°incredible ability to merge by the millions,¡± Richard Alexander and Thomas Moore observed in their 1962 paper, ¡°within a matter of hours after having spent 13 or 17 years underground as silent, burrowing, solitary, sedentary juveniles is without parallel in the animal kingdom.¡±
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