They're Heeeeeeeere: Cicadas Emerge, But Early Arrivals Appear to Prefer Trendy North Reston

Hey Reston, are you ready for the appearance of millions of cicadas, returning for the first time since 2004 after a 17-year slumber? Because they're apparently ready for you, Reston.

Your Restonian was here back in ought-four and remembers how the last appearance of Brood X was of seemingly biblical proportions. However, thus far, there have only been a handful of verified sightings, at least according to this one fancy cellular telephone app -- a technology which wasn't available back 'round the turn of the century, when we had to relay our cicada observations to entomologists via carbon paper and carrier pigeon. 

Check it, as the kids probably haven't said since the last time the cicadas emerged:

Based on some pretty sophisticated data analytics (on the four reported sightings), we can conclude that like Realtors, Brood X apparently prefers fashionable North Reston by a (checks supercomputer) three-to-one margin. 

And the one outlier -- spotted near Reston National Golf Course in South Reston -- may have made a terrible mistake. You see, when there's large-scale construction and the earth gets turned over for footers and foundations and whatnot, it often destroys the underground habitats that cicadas spend the first 16 years of their lives in -- think of them as the very Reston-like sunken living rooms of the insect world. Back in ought-four, for example, big chunks of newly constructed particleboard Loudoun County were eerily cicada-free for that very reason. Maybe they'll emerge from Loudoun's creatively shaped parkland this time around.

So based on recent events, I think we probably won't need a fancy smartphone app to guess where the cicadas of 2038 will be conspicuously absent in our plastic fantastic planned community, the end.