As trillions of cicadas noisily emerge from their nests all over the country, residents of one South Carolina county have had enough. They’re calling their local police to find out why their pastoral peace and quiet is being disrupted by intrusive sirens or a loud roar.
AP reports the Newberry County Sheriff’s Office sent out a message on Facebook letting people know Tuesday the incessant whining sound is just lonely male cicadas singing to attract mates after more than a decade of being dormant.
Some people have reportedly even flagged down deputies to ask what the noise is all about, Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster said.
The AP report states the noisiest cicadas were moving around the county of about 38,000 people, about 40 miles northwest of Columbia, prompting calls from different locations as Tuesday wore on, Foster said.
As Breitbart News reported, this spring is boasting an unusual cicada double dose parts of the United States are being invaded in what University of Connecticut cicada expert John Cooley called “cicada-geddon.”
The last time these two broods came out together in 1803 Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about cicadas in his Garden Book but mistakenly called them locusts, was president.
“Periodic cicadas don’t do subtle,” Cooley said, and the scientific evidence supports that claim.
Their collective songs can be as loud as jet engines and scientists who study them often wear earmuffs to protect their hearing.
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