Yes, to be fair to the cicadas, I do feel that they are beneficial and really something pretty "wondrous" because they are so very strange, but I had so many and the noise they made was so intense that after a couple of weeks of them they became a distint nuisance. And they did seem to favor the rhodies in my yard for some strange reason (they were supposed to 'prefer' the oak and ash trees, but thousands (and I do NOT exaggerate here) only made it onto my rhodies. I'm still not convinced that I've got weevils...with this much damage I'd have to see the occasional bug or find the larvae in the ground and I have never seen either. The "cuts" and notches are NOT made by an insect...the brown spot gets dry (like paper) and then falls out...leaving the notch on the leaf. If you don't observe this as it happens you would think that an insect chomped the leaf, but if you observe the process from when the spots first appear and then watch the leaf over time you actually see it dry up, get hard and then drop away (and it leaves an ever so faint brown "edge" around the notch or cut too. Anyway, didn't mean to diss the cicadas; I actually liked them (up to a point) and after all it doesn't happen but once every 7 (or was it 10?) years so its no biggie but I had read that when they come out in such numbers as Brood X did and they lay their eggs in young immature trees that it does sometimes stress and even kill them and I just wondered if that was perhaps what happened to my Rhodies (which are more like trees than shrubs). I had lots of fun observing the cicadas from their emergence to their rather messy end and took lots of photos of the entire process. Part of their "strategy" in coming out in such massive numbers is that predators quickly become sated and can no longer eat them and I observed this first hand. . The toad was so sated that he completely ignored this "scrumptious" little morsel! Longlocks

Since you mentioned this, I checked out my ground around my water gardens in the back yard, and sure enough.....those perfectly round holes that they come out of are there! Haven't seen any in person yet. Ain't nature grand?!

@nini804 these are not the regular yearly cicadas. These come only every 17 years - and in droves - up out of the ground. At the worst of it (I guess when the most had appeared) at times it would sound like a lower level home alarm going off. @cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA) so funny the different opinions/advice. I only know my friend's new area of trees are severely damaged. Who knows if they will live? :( We are advised to net young, tender trees but I'm sure there is a certain kind and way to do it. Many of our beautiful, mature trees look bad right now because of the "ends" of branches being broken by the cicadas but still hanging on the trees, dead and brown. A good storm will probably bring them down. But at least the trees are not damaged. But! They are gone!!

Fried grasshoppers are very good and also very popular in Mexico, especially in the state of Oaxaca. They are served with salt, lime, and chili, and so you can barely taste the grasshopper at all, but they are definitely crunchy. To me, grasshoppers taste a bit like lettuce or celery, but it depends on what they have eaten. I've never eaten cicadas, but then I've never been around them. I would not eat crickets - they seem nastier than grasshoppers, but I could be wrong. I think of crickets as lizard food. I've had chocolate covered ants (horrible) and chocolate covered bees - not bad but rather tasteless, and I felt bad for the bees, but not for the ants. Ants taste like formic acid, which is why they are not good to eat.