From Daniel's desk

Cicada - Everyone seems to be going "gaga" over them. I myself on the other hand am not. I first encountered these critters or a different species of cicadas when I was at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn in 1994. Those insects are ugly indeed. In addition, one of those ugly critter's got on my uniform. Then I encountered them in South Korea in Camp Colbern. When they get indoors they make so much noise.

In D.C. Area, It's the Day Of the Cicada (washingtonpost.com) : "As it was then, so it will be in 2004: The females will begin to deposit their eggs -- each female cicada carries an estimated 400 to 600 -- after scratching incisions into pencil-thin tree branches. (This activity sometimes results in damage to young trees, and gardeners may want to protect trees by wrapping them in fine netting.) "

In D.C. Area, It's the Day Of the Cicada (washingtonpost.com) : "'Predatory Satiation' Some insects are endowed with elaborate defense mechanisms -- such as moths, whose bodies course with toxins -- that ensure they are left pretty well alone. Not periodical cicadas. There are simply too many of them to be wiped out by predators. Their sheer volume is a survival tactic scientists call 'predatory satiation.' "

In D.C. Area, It's the Day Of the Cicada (washingtonpost.com) : "Prepare to welcome Brood X (that's 10), as a federal bureaucrat named this batch of 17-year cicadas. Periodical cicadas last appeared in the Washington area in 1996, when Brood II came topside. That emergence, while sparser overall, affected Virginia more heavily than will X, which will largely sidestep the Old Dominion. "