Brood X

17 years. The longest insect lifecycle on Earth.

I am talking about Brood X Cicadas. There are several broods of cicadas here in the USA but none is more famous than Brood X. These insects emerge every 17 years in the BILLIONS-1.4 Million per acre in some places. Depending on where you live, you may be shoveling their exoskeletons out from under your trees, and in other places you may have little to none.

Brood X covers a pretty large area. I live in the Cincinnati, Ohio area–to give you an idea of my geography.

I love this kind of thing. This will be the 3rd time in my lifetime, although I was only an infant for the first appearance. The first time I remember brood X was in 2004. I was 17 years old but I have only three solid memories from their appearance.

I remember the bugs flying into the open windows of my high school Spanish classroom. We didn’t have air conditioning for some reason so the windows were open. The second memory I have was while we were driving home from school. I remember a bush that looked like it was “alive.” It was covered in cicadas. The last memory I have included me taking a ton of the exoskeletons and sticking them to my shirt and going inside to scare my Mom.

One of the few trees that actually have cicadas on it in my neighborhood.

This year, where I live, we did not have a huge invasion. My neighborhood was built in the late 90’s so the ground was disturbed and the insects have not had time to repopulate the area. However, toward the end of our street, on some of the larger trees, we found some.

I am going to share a few photos from this years appearance. I also have designed a cicada foundation paper piecing pattern that also includes some embroidery to help commemorate their appearance this year. It is FREE! YAY!