To eat brood II or not?

[urbpan]

There's a lot of talk about eating cicadas on the internet these days--probably I'm encountering it through my own self-filtering. Brood II, in case your own self-filtering has insulated you from this knowledge, is one of the 17 year cicada events on the east coast. From North Carolina to southern Connecticut there will be millions upon millions of large red-eyed insects emerging from their prime number slumber to ascend trees and emit their decibel-shattering love call.

I've only ever experienced annual cicadas--green, "dog day" cicadas which are loud and briefly plentiful, but nothing like these periodical events. I'm eager to travel to the action, perhaps to New Haven, a city I've never visited but that everyone assumes I'm from when I say I grew up in Connecticut.

There seems to be a certain amount of anxiety about this cicada event, fear driven by...I don't know what exactly. The way that cicadas look? The fact that there will suddenly be thousands around, making encounters between humans and these insects more likely? A friend posted a photo of a display of insecticides from (presumably) a hardware store, prominently advertising the fact that the products would kill cicadas. This is the worst kind of fear-pandering, since killing these animals does exactly nothing to control the "problem" of 17 year cicadas. They are active for a short period during one summer, mate and lay eggs, and then disappear again for the length of time that it takes a human to become an adult. So it may appear that by spraying whatever poison around you have made them go away, but they will go away with or without your participation.

The entomophagy community is using the UN recommendations and the Brood II emergence as a synergistic opportunity to promote bug-eating. Supposedly a southern Connecticut sushi restaurant is preparing to (or joking about) make cicada sushi. I'll take the tempura, please--uncooked invertebrates are likely to harbor parasites. This NatGeo Article helpfully adds "[their] plant-based diet gives them a green, asparagus-like flavor."

Of course most Westerners are not among the 2 billion people of the world who already include insects as part of their diet. There's a taboo on this class of arthropod, a disgust borne purely from cultural bias. My favorite recent analysis comes from (of course) a comedian, Andy Zaltzman, on The Bugle Podcast:

"There's no way I'm prepared to eat insects. Mashed up connective tissue of pigs? Yeah, yeah, I'm happy with that. The livers of birds that basically amount to aerial vermin? Yeah! The hacked to pieces corpse of a mechanically slaughtered baby cow? Absolutely! Insects? Never! Unless they're basically insects that live in the sea, in which case, OH YEAH give me a bit of mayonnaise and let me rip its head off! And eat it whole, stomach included, in one go--I don't care if it's dead eyes are staring at me, and if it was waving at me from a bucket ten minutes ago--YUM."

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Urgh, the thoughts of it. Food taboos are strange and irrational, but the thought of eating bugs is too gross to me. Then again unlike that comedian dude I've always found all seafood a disgusting prospect as well. My Chinese drawing teacher was slagging me off yesterday for not liking food. I'm pretty squeamish for a Limerick girl.

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

If it is in my beer, and I know this from experience, I will eat it.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

they're loud and they're EVERYWHERE and they're stupid and fly into your face and food and everything. (memories of brood x in maryland).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm totally okay with eating cicadas! And the school system here does a unit at some point (third grade maybe?) on eating mopani worms.

Currently the only things I don't eat are things that (a) have a texture I don't like and/or a smell I don't like and (b) that I'm not accustomed to. Both things are necessary, and if I can get over (b) (through exposure), I can often whittle away at (a).

[autumnfox.livejournal.com]

They are really, really, seriously, crazy loud. Nothing like the day cicadas. And people say that it's quite disturbing to have to shove your way through them when you're walking somewhere (I have experienced the sound, but not the crowding). One friend, who was a recent immigrant and had no idea about periodical cicadas, once had them start to emerge from the ground en masse in a spot where she had just sat down for a picnic - you can probably imagine her reaction :)

I have not seen insecticide marketed to kill cicadas yet, but I have seen cicada netting for sale prominently in a local Home Depot. I have been warned to try to protect young trees from them, as the new larvae can destroy a small tree's root system.

I am game to try to eat some if I come across any :) Not sure if they are hitting this particular part of Pennsylvania.

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

Brood X in VA was disturbing because of the noise and because when that many LARGE insects molt and die, they leave behind a lot of detritis. Seriously, stepping on them was just gross. Seeing tree branches covered by them was creepy.

As far as eating them, I don't object to them intellectually, but I'm not sure if I could actually do it.

[iainzard.livejournal.com]

The generalised cicada fear probably falls into the "ewww, bugs" realm, but I know the (responsible) motorcycling community is warning people about the potential hazards of impact with an object that size and weight at speed, and the possibility of dieoff causing slippery roads in some areas. I don't know whether the latter is likely, but from experience even a moderately sized insect can be painful and distracting at low speeds; on the highway it could be disastrous.

As for eating them, bring it on. I've eaten my share of bugs, and I'm pretty sure I have eaten the non-cyclical cicadas before back home in New Zealand. Is there any reason NOT to eat them?

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Maybe on a pizza? ;) But nah, I'll leave the cicadas to those critters outside who wish to eat them.