They’re going loco for locusts.
A South Carolina sheriff’s department has been swarmed with 911 calls about incessant siren sounds — only to find out that the concerned citizens are complaining about cicadas.
Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster put the community’s anxiety to rest Tuesday, saying the “noise in the air that sounds like a siren, or a whine, or a roar” is nothing more than the bugs emerging from more than a decade of slumber.
“Although to some, the noise is annoying, they pose no danger to humans or pets,” Foster wrote on Facebook.
“Unfortunately it is the sounds of nature.”
The screaming-like sound that South Carolinians were reporting is the sound of male critters singing to attract new mates.
Trillions of red-eyed periodical cicadas are emerging from underground in the eastern US this month, including the rare convergence of two periodical broods that stay underground for either 13 years or 17 years.
It will be the first time in 221 years that the two types of cicadas – brood XIX and XIII – have risen from the ground at the same time, back when Thomas Jefferson was president, and it is not expected to happen again until 2244.
The noisiest cicadas were moving around the rural county of about 38,000 people, about 40 miles northwest of Columbia, prompting calls from different locations as Tuesday wore on, Foster said.
Some people have even flagged down deputies to ask what the noise is all about, Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster said.
Their collective songs can be as loud as jet engines and scientists who study them often wear earmuffs to protect their hearing.
With Post wires
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