Another LV annoyance

Here’s another reasons not to move to Las Vegas: the cicadas. They’ve been buzzing pretty loudly for about a month now, and we’ve got another month to go. If you’re not familiar with the critters, the LV Sun has some great info:

Cicadas are perfectly harmless. This may be hard to accept when walnut-sized insects surround your house and hiss like a thousand weed whackers or, worse, when suicide cicadas, for reasons unknown to man or science, begin hurling themselves at your patio door and, — oh no! — now they’re at the dog door, they’re trying to come in, like some Hitchcock movie, but, no. Cicadas are perfectly harmless. To help you get over it, we talked to Will Pratt, the curator of invertebrates at UNLV’s Barrick Museum of Natural History. Here’s what we learned:

What’s our cicada’s name?

Diceroprocta apache, the Apache cicada. Unlike its famous Midwestern cousins that live for 17 years and have giant brood emergences, ours has a life span of two or three years and there’s a small brood every year.

Where do they live the rest of the year?

Beneath your very feet. Cicadas live all of their lives underground, except for a two-month adulthood. “You could think of the adults as a stage the nymphs use to reproduce and disperse,” Pratt says, which is probably how your kids think about you.

Cicadas’ bountiful buzzing is back - Las Vegas Sun

Walking around with these things buzzing is strange. It’s like something out of a science fiction movie, minus the redshirts dying a grisly death.

So when it’s 100 degrees at dusk and these things are driving you nuts, you might be reconsidering your move to Vegas. But hey, Nevada doesn’t have an income tax, so it’s all worth it, right?