My dogs absolutely devoured one round of cicadas when they (the cicadas) were here several years ago.  Given how fat they got chowing down on the bugs, it doesn’t surprise that these every now and then visitors to our realm are considered “the shrimp of the land.”  From NBC News.com,

“They are arthropods, which means they have an exoskeleton,” she said. “We regularly eat the arthropods of the sea and those are the shrimp, lobsters and crabs. And so cicadas are arthropods too.”

Like other edible insects, cicadas are nutritious, according to Betancourt. She says their bodies are high in protein, low in fat and feature a lot of muscle.

Betancourt suggests trying to grab the magicadas when they’re fresh from the ground and undergoing their molting stage…

Sounds delish, but I may have to pass!

A beehive that has been in the eve of a log cabin in Utah was removed after 60,000 bees had made it their home for 17 years.  When the family finally saw that the bees were making their way indoors, they decided the risk was too great for their two children to remain.  Sensitive to the decline of the species, the family wisely had the bees relocated by professionals.  From NBC News.com,

… they called Bachman, owner of Deseret Hive Supply, a hobbyist store that can’t keep up with demand for honeybees. Bachman used a vacuum cleaner to suck the bees into a cage.

“It doesn’t hurt them,” he said.

The job took six hours. At $100 an hour, the bill came to $600.

“The bees were expensive,” said Paul Bertagnolli, the cabin owner. He was satisfied with the job.

I know with proper equipment, it’s fairly safe to do but I would have a very difficult time not panicking in the midst of that many bees!

Photo from Capital Bay.

Since we are on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy and probably not nearly as advanced as other planetary neighbors, it’s pretty amazing really that the dung beetle is tuned in to the stars.

According the NBC News.com, the dung beetle uses the glow of the Milky Way to steer across the African desert,

“Even on clear, moonless nights, many dung beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths,” Marie Dacke, a biologist at Sweden’s Lund University, said in a news release. “This led us to suspect that the beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation — a feat that had, to our knowledge, never before been demonstrated in an insect.”

I know humans that can’t find their way from Point A to Point B without intervention from people with sense, so it really is pretty inspiring that a tiny little dung beetle manages this feat!

Never having had a scientific mind, this experiment would not even occur to me to do.  However I certainly find the results fascinating!

Photo taken with my iPhone last week.

Photo from Colossal Art & Design.

I flipped a bug and I liked it.

While there may be more emotional reward when you flip a turtle over from its back, it does feel good to rescue bugs every now and then.

I thank 1,000 Awesome Things for that Reminder,

… he was just lying on his back like a fool, arms and legs frantically pawing the air in a terrible attempt to flip over. Well I flicked him a bit and he flipped over before scampering away to safety.

Hey, sometimes insects just need our help.

Such a sweet thing to do!

Photo by Ben Sutherland.

My brother once had a skinny old dog that remained skinny even when well fed.  Until 17 years ago when the cicadas came out.  That dog fattened up so much you could nearly see the wings sticking out through the sides.

Well, my dogs today are enjoying that feast again as the cicadas have made their return – by the millions – to my part of the country.  We knew they were coming because reporters have been telling us for weeks to brace ourselves.  Then last week we started noticing the dogs sniffing around by the bottom of our trees.  Now we can hardly get them in because they just eat and eat and eat.

People have been warning us that the exoskeleton of the cicadas can hurt dogs, but the National Geographic says they really are a delicacy,

Dogs and cats may also avail themselves of the cicada smorgasbord. It does them no harm, although if they eat too many they may have some difficulty digesting a surfeit of cicada skins. There have been reported cases of dogs’ digestive tracts becoming blocked by eating too many cicadas.

Well, chow down I say to my dogs.  I won’t be eating any at any point in the future, though.

While there is probably some logical scientific explanation for this, it is completely alien and creepy to me.  Spiders in Pakistan are encasing entire trees,

Forced to find refuge, the spiders gathered in trees with mixed results. The arachnids’ combined web efforts did cut down on mosquitoes and the elevated potential for malaria, but the dense webs also lessened the amount of sunlight reaching the leaves on the trees. As a long-term result, many of the trees were killed. With the scorching sun that bears down on Pakistan regularly, the loss of shade may be another less obvious natural disaster for humans in the area.

National Geographic has lots of photos.