What Is This?

Something my wife's cats would absolutely love to play with!

I believe that is a cicada...

Bait for fishing..?

Yes, it's a cicada.

Thanks Greg. I looked it up and it does look like what I saw. I have never seen it before.

The Cicadas are the bugs that go " chhh..chhhh chh... " in the trees on a very hot day.

Rather large & scary looking aren't they ? Our 17 yr Cicadas are black - with RED eyes.

it's a cicada. a rather large chewy insect, that makes a cha cha cha sound in the summer. we have a pair of cicada killers guarding our lawn, huge things that drag those bugs under ground.

---Mike Savad

Mike - are the Cicada killers these huge beast of a giant black looking wasp / hornet thing that looks like it could carry you away ?

they look like a school bus with a stinger on the end. from a distance you can count stripes and see the stinger. they can attack you if you provoke it, and it's really hard to aim at when shooting hornet killer at it. never seems to land. they take hold of the cicada, sting it, and dig a hole in your yard, and then buries the bug.

---Mike Savad

i sure wouldn't want to step on one anyway.

---Mike Savad

Thanks Mike. Those things ARE Huge.

Good to know.


EDIT - ok, just saw your picture.

The thing I had seen was Black ( some white stripes or markings) & looked like the Queen Bee of Hornets.
3 -4 " in body length.

Fortunately, solitary wasps like cicada killers aren't very aggressive or territorial. They will sting if your really provoke them, but they don't have that protect the hive mentality that bald faced hornets, yellow jackets and other hive dwellers have.

They sure are scary looking though!

Thank you Andrew.

Didn't mean to sidetrack this thread Vonnie - but with so many people allergic to Bee stings I am sure that info helps.

I often have them all buzzing around me in the gardens & for the most part they all just want to do their little bee jobs.

Certain species are aggressive - & it is good to know what to avoid ( without killing everything you see buzzing).

I love the sound of Cicadas as it means that the Summer is here

Roy - agreed. : )

When we were kids we could tell the temperature of the afternoon by how early in the morning the Cicadas would start chirping.

This was , of course - before the days of The Weather Channel.
After this long winter, I am happy to hear them every day.

never saw, or ever want to see a 4" hornet. there are carpenter bees, but they are smaller than those hornets. kind of curious what they look like though.

---Mike Savad

Whose hand is that? My Gawd. I wouldn't touch them, even if they were dead.

Carpenter Bees ? They are big fat wooley bulley looking bumble bees. About the size of your thumb.

Extremely non aggressive . Will only sting/bite if directly grabbed.

Better that you don't see them. They love the wooden rafters of old houses.

i can tell you it's not my hand. that's for certain. i have one of these dead in a jar.

it took a while to kill off the bee that made a 1/2" opening in a rafter in the porch. i don't know how far up it went, and while they are solitary, i shot that about 10 times with killer and it kept coming back.


you can always tell when you have them when sawdust rains down for no reason at all.

---Mike Savad

Looks like a cicada to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada

Mary

If it looks like this, it's a cicada...


They shed their outer shell...