0:00
welcome to ANI in the air under the tent wondrous Wednesday where I talk about
0:04
something wondrous today is cicada week so I'll talk about cicadas I actually
0:11
don't know that much about them because it's been 17 years since I've I've seen
0:16
the last big brood I do see them occasionally every year of course they
0:19
some do come out but you know they come out in large numbers so from my
0:25
understanding they kind of pop out of the ground shed their shell maybe get
0:32
another show um and then fly up to trees do something to help produce some eggs
0:42
and then the female lays some eggs in a tree branch that eventually becomes
0:52
damaged and blackened and it it it then falls off and the you know the little
1:04
baby cicada stuff then burrow into the ground and disappear so that's their
1:09
basic life cycle and I thought I would read the words of Benjamin Banneker who
1:23
was born a free black man in Baltimore County in 1731 so mostly known as an
1:32
astronomer and mathematician and wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson about you
1:36
know race relations but he apparently also was the first as far as people can
1:45
tell a scientist of the colonies to
1:51
basically figure out the 17 years cicada cycle so let's see I think this was
2:05
17 yeah supposedly it was 17 when this occurred although it doesn't doesn't
2:23
quite make sense so there's an article in the Baltimore Sun that I'm kind of
2:27
just riffing off of says he was born in 1731 then he had his first experience
2:32
with cicadas at the at the age of 17 and 1749 which doesn't make any sense
2:37
because 17 plus 31 is 40 well I guess I guess it depends on when they were
2:49
person was born exactly and the skaters came out so yeah I guess it must have
2:55
been before the 18th birthday all right okay I mean yeah so I guess that can
3:00
make sense anyway 17 and 1749 and he wrote the
3:08
following about this first experience I then imagined they came to eat and
3:13
destroy the fruit of the earth and would occasion of famine in the land I
3:17
therefore began to kill and destroy them but soon saw that my labor was in vain
3:21
therefore gave over my pretension so yeah when he first saw them it was like
3:28
what there's all these things there this demon brood that's gonna eat stuff and
3:34
then it came like 17 years later I then being about 40 34 years of age had more
3:39
sense than to endeavor to destroy them knowing they were not so pernicious to
3:43
the fruit of the earth so basically he realized from the first experience that
3:47
they weren't going to eat up everything that's some demons that will spawn and
3:52
that they can come out and but eat a bunch of stuff and everything kind of
3:56
survives and then he writes their periodical return is 17 years but they
4:02
like the comments make a but short stay with us the female has a sting in her
4:07
tail as sharp and hard as a thorn with which she perforates the branches of the
4:12
trees and in them holes lays eggs the branch soon dies and falls then the egg
4:17
by some occult cause emerges a great depth into the earth and there continues
4:22
for the space of 17 years the stinger is of the female is not harmful to humans
4:31
it's just harmful to the trees and then
4:41
yeah I'm not sure if there was any more the writing but yeah so yeah he there
4:54
were a lot of his writings that were destroyed due to a fire which is quite
5:00
unfortunate but yeah it seems like he might be one of the first or the first
5:07
to write about cicadas and their 17 year life cycle so I think that's kind of
5:12
nice and some chickens are approaching me you know I do wonder how the chickens
5:17
are going to handle the cicadas I imagine the stage with the cicadas with
5:23
a quite vulnerable to chickens but hopefully they won't get all of them
5:32
maybe enough to keep the noise from deafening us all right well so that was
5:38
wondrous Wednesday all about cicadas and yeah and a bit of the history of the
5:46
study of them all right well I guess that is enough of that you have all good
5:56
one and I will see you when I see you