Amazing things people do to celebrate a cicada emergence

Cicada Snacking. Probably the most unexpected thing people do during a periodical cicada emergence is eat them. Ice cream parlors have made cicada ice cream, pizza parlors have advertised cicada pizza, and people have created cicada recipe books. People and pets enjoy eating them; so do fish, so if you’re a fisherman, you can use them as bait. Would you eat a cicada? Maybe with BBQ Sauce?

Songs about cicadas. Over the years many artists have recorded songs about cicadas. There’s a music compilation called 17-Year Itch featuring songs about periodical cicadas…

… recently a musician called Dr. Chordate wrote a song called Periodic Cicadas. Would you write a song about a periodical cicada emergence?

Make some cicada arts and crafts. There are an amazing array of cicada arts and crafts for sale on Etsy, including jewelry, clothes, paintings, sculptures, and stationary. Would you make some cicada artwork? Would you sell it online? A lot of people have written books about cicadas. Would you write a poem, story, or an entire book about cicadas?

Cicada Activities

Report your cicada sightings to Cicadas @ UCONN (formerly Magicicada.org) so they can add your cicadas to their maps.

Don’t forget to photograph and video cicadas, and share them on Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo. Blog or Tweet about your cicada experiences, and don’t forget to let us know about your cicadas on Twitter @cicadamania or Facebook.

You can try one of these cicada experiments and projects including, searching for rare white or blue-eyed cicadas, documenting a cicada’s life cycle, or keeping a cicada in captivity.

You can color a cicada with crayons or markers (PDF), or just draw your own.

Don’t forget to collect some cicadas and cicada parts. You can preserve cicadas a number of ways. You can preserve them in Lucite for an interesting paper weight. You can pin and mount cicadas; here is a how to article for pinning cicadas. Cicada wings and nymph skins don’t need preservatives. I keep them in small, magnifying boxes: