The funny thing is that the Ann Arbor News ran an article today indicating that the first Washtenaw cicada sightings have occurred:

The emergence of the periodical cicada in the past week in northeast Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor Township is the first sighting in the state, according to Michigan State University entomology professor Howard Russell ….

They were first sighted last week in Ann Arbor near Oak Trails Montessori School. In Ann Arbor Township, they’ve been spotted near the Matthaei Botanical Gardens on Dixboro Road.

Paul Girard, horticulture assistant at the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens, first noticed the mass of “nymphs” (juvenile cicadas) a few weeks ago as they emerged from their underground burrows and started molting. Last week, they started shedding their shells.

“There are millions and millions of them,” he said, against the backdrop of the young male adults’ mating chorus. “They definitely like it when it’s warmer out here, over 65 degrees.”

Their piercing chorus, he said, “sounds like frogs in the spring, but a little different. The first time I heard, it was almost like an old (movie’s) spaceship kind of noise, coming across the sky.”

Coooooool …..

Update: I’m on Cicada Mania (in the June 9 updates section on the main page)! I was the first to send them the Ann Arbor News link about the cicadas, I guess. Woo hoo!

From the ‘Sorry we tortured your uncle, raped your wife, blew your kid’s legs off and destroyed your home and livelihood, but at least we’re giving you cheap gas!’ Department:

We’re paying $2.09 in Ann Arbor for a gallon of gas this week. Meanwhile, « Baghdad drivers are paying 5 CENTS a gallon, » thanks to the billions of dollars we’re sending them:

‘While Americans are shelling out record prices for fuel, Iraqis pay only about 5 cents a gallon for gasoline—a benefit of hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies bankrolled by American taxpayers. Before the war, forecasters predicted that by invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein, America would benefit from increased exports of oil from Iraq, which has the world’s second-largest petroleum reserves. That would mean cheap gas for American motorists and a boost for the oil-dependent American economy.

More than a year after the invasion, that logic has been flipped on its head. Now the average price for gasoline in the United States is $2.05 a gallon—50 cents more than the pre-invasion price. Instead, the only people getting cheap gas as a result of the invasion are the Iraqis. Filling a 22-gallon tank in Baghdad with low-grade fuel costs just $1.10, plus a 50-cent tip for the attendant. A tankful of high-test costs $2.75. In Britain, by contrast, gasoline prices hit $5.79 per gallon last week—$127 for a tankful.

…

The U.S. government paid even more last year for Iraqis’ gasoline—between $1.59 and $1.70 per gallon—when the imports were contracted to Halliburton, the Texas oil services giant formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. … Iraqi drivers protest that the price difference between a gallon of gas in the United States and Iraq is fair because the average Iraqi earns around $1,000 per year, a thirtieth of the average U.S. wage.’

Ain’t it all lovely? Yet one more Neo-Con lie. But, hey. We broke it, we bought it, I suppose.

No cicadas in Philadelphia this year. The Philadelphia Inquirer theorizes that it’s possible that an increase in concrete in areas where cicadas may have laid their eggs in the past 17 years may account for the absence, but an entomologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia says that the outbreaks of cicadas were just as “patchy” in 1987.

According to the Inquirer article, most of the 2004 cicadas are appearing in the forested areas between Baltimore and the DC Beltway. There are tons of cicadas in the suburbs of Philadelphia and in Chester County, but none in the city itself. Almost no cicadas in Nerw Jersey south of Princeton.

And, of course, still nothing in Washtenaw.

[Link courtesy Cicada Mania.]