Seventeen Year Locust

Picture Courtesy of Rick Lee: Charleston WV

The seventeen year locusts have attacked. Hundreds of thousands of them are whirring through my woods. The sound is deafening - like a million tiny buzz saws moving through the trees.

These nasty bugs erupt from the ground every seventeen years, shed their exoskeleton and fly into the tree tops. Here they nibble on the leaves, breed, drop their larvae to the ground where they burrow into the ground. The larvae feed on the tender roots of the trees and seventeen years later, we have it all again.

It's both facinating and gross at the same time!

P.S. Today is my birthday.