Periodical cicadas called Brood V  have emerged from the ground after 17 years of life as a nymphs feeding on the juices of plant roots.  It took me a week of attempts to locate a local population of these amazing critters.  I hiked several miles through nature preserves with no success knowing that they had been seen in many places in eastern Ohio.  Finally, I took my family back to Kendall Ledges in the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area between Akron and Cleveland OH yesterday.   I had been there two days earlier and saw only a single cicada despite walking over a mile through woods.  This time we took a different path and we came across two patches of cicadas.

A map showing the different Broods of 17 and 13 year cicadas in the eastern USA. Brook V are the purple dots over Ohio. Each brood is on a different cycle…