Billions of winged teenagers will crawl out of the ground, sing their hearts out and fall in love this summer.

As crazy as that sounds, it’s reality for the Brood II cicadas that only come around once every 17 years. The insects are found only in eastern North America, and nowhere else in the world.

Known as magicicada, they have been maturing underground for 17 years, slurping on fluid from the roots of trees. The magic number seems to be 64 degrees: They won’t come out until the soil is that temperature, according to two local experts.

The phenomenon: Soil in Cumberland County was 48 degrees over the weekend, said Ed Dix, a forester with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry. So the area still has till about late May or early June before the swarm, he said.

Adult cicadas are 1 to 1-1/2 inches long and have red eyes. Not to be confused with the more common annual cicadas, which look like huge, green flies, magicicadas are both smaller and much rarer.

“They’re definitely going to be noticeable,” said Timothy Abbey, of Penn State Cooperative Extension.

As daunting as billions of huge flies might seem, the bugs are mostly harmless.

Abbey said the insects are plant feeders and not much of a bother to crops. They don’t bite or damage property, but since females lay their eggs in the delicate twigs of deciduous trees, branches can break off and leaves might turn brown.

“But they’re not really a pest: They’re actually a beneficial thing when they come out,” Abbey said, as birds and small mammals like to snack on them.

The cicada way: These periodical cicadas have garnered the nickname “17-year locusts,” even though they’re not locusts, which are a type of grasshopper. When colonists settled in America, they hadn’t seen cicadas before and saw them as the locusts from the biblical plague, Dix said.

After the males emerge, they’ll begin to “sing” constantly. After about 10 days, mating will begin and females will deposit about 600 eggs. It’s a short party, and in just a few weeks, the adults will die and the hatchlings will return to the ground and restart the cycle.

But it is a big production, and the males’ song is loud and unmistakable. Dix said not to pay them too much mind.

“It’s just a bunch of 17-year-old males singing in a tree trying to find a mate,” he said matter-of-factly.

In York: The region the cicadas choose depends largely on how dense its woods are: The more trees, the more cicadas. Dix said areas east of the Susquehanna River have the most chance of a large influx.

“York County actually might have very little impact,” he said.

Their next return to York will be in 2021 in the form of Brood X, the largest of eight broods in the state.

Visit www.magicicada.org for maps and more information about the incoming cicadas.

Reported by MOLLIE DURKIN of The York Dispatch from YORK, PA. Reach her at mdurkin@yorkdispatch.com.

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Find out what happens when the bedbugs bite. http://youtu.be/ObVqT9daRuc

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Does your cat think its a dog? http://youtu.be/OztGJhiBQTo

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What does it take to elevate the common ant from picnic pest to household pet?

To thousands of kids and many adults, the answer is a bit of soil and a see-through enclosure that, in these modern times, can be made from an extra CD case or bought tricked out with special projection lights.

Ant farms, the narrow glass or plastic containers filled with soil that mimic ant colonies, have been popular among generations of kids, and remain in-demand even in the age of computers and video games.

Uncle Milton Industries, a Los Angeles-based company that has been in business for six decades, has sold more than 20 million ant farms. Company founder Milton Levine and his brother-in-law invented the ant farm nearly 60 years ago, and the company continues to update its main product, such as with a version that includes a light that projects the ants’ shadows on the ceiling.

Thousands of people, not just children, enjoy insects as pets and are willing to spend the time and money on them, said Lila Higgins, manager of the Citizen Science and Live Animals exhibit at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.

“We have 16,000 people come to our bug fair every year and a lot of them buy or collect insects as pets. As long as we’re buying from responsible traders and collecting responsibly, I think the benefit (of taking queen ants) can far outweigh the cost to our environment,” Higgins said.

The workers: Ant farms can be an easy way to help nurture a child’s interest in insects, since they can be homemade or purchased. Uncle Milton Industries’ ant farms come with 12 to 20 harvester worker ants, which are chosen because “they are diggers, strong and robust,” Malouf said.

Queen ants are not included, so the colony will last about three months, he said. A colony reproduces because of the queen, its sole fertile member. Her eggs keep the colony going for years, Higgins said.

Learning tool: Noah Shryack of Stanton, Texas, “has loved ants since he was 1 or 2 and he put them in his bucket and tried to bring them in the house,” said his mom, Lana. She promised he could get an ant farm “when he was old enough,” which was last Christmas, when he was 5.

“He loves it. He checks every morning to see what the ants have done overnight,” said Shryack, who likes taking a look too. “I was almost as excited as him,” she said.

Rachael Estanislao, an Atlanta blogger and mother of a 6-year-old boy, treats her son’s ant farm as an educational toy rather than a pet, though she has used the ants to teach him about caring for another living creature.

“It’s definitely like learning to have a pet. It’s about learning to respect their environment and helping them live healthy,” she said.

As an educational toy, she said it was one of the few that has kept her son Anakin’s interest.

The idea is to help kids discover nature and its critters in the hope it will make them curious about the world around them, Malouf said. Estanislao agreed, saying the farm taught Anakin about ant hills and the mounds he sees outside. Shryack said her son is amazed most by the large pieces of food the ants can carry and their teamwork to dig tunnels.

She said when some died, she also used it as a teaching moment: “I just told him it is a normal process and some live and some die.”

Make your own: Those who want to build their ant farms can do so with a handful of CD cases and instructions that are readily available online. The trickiest part is filling the colony with harvester ants — the best type for keeping as pets — and catching a queen, since she has a lot of worker ants protecting her, Higgins said.

The best time to catch a queen, which is bigger than the worker ants, is after the mating flight, Higgins said. Once a colony is settled, it will become “quite a yearslong investment,” Higgins said.

___

Online:

— Arizona State University: http://www.askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/ant_farm

— Los Angeles County Natural History Museum: http://www.nhm.org

— Uncle Milton Industries: http://www.unclemilton.com
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Reported by SUE MANNING of the Associated Press from LOS ANGELES, Calif.

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An endangered Florida panther rescued as a kitten and raised in captivity has made a rare run back into the wild.

The sandy-colored, 120-pound panther cautiously poked its head out of the crate that wildlife officials drove Wednesday from northeast Florida to Palm Beach County, then it trotted out onto a gravel road in the Rotenberger Wildlife Management Area.

It built up speed with longer and longer strides, sprinting several hundred yards before veering off into the brush and disappearing.

“To see him run straight like that for such a distance and running free off into the woods makes everything worthwhile,” said Dave Onorato, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission scientist who opened the panther’s crate.

The 2-year-old male panther and its sister were rescued by wildlife officials in September 2011 in Collier County after their mother was found dead. They have been raised at the White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee since they were 5 months old.

Only around 160 Florida panthers remain, and it’s rare for the big cats to be cared for in captivity and then released. Only about 15 kittens or injured adult panthers have been treated at the center and released since it began working with the cats in 1986.

“Having him in the wild with the potential to contribute to reproductive output really is what we need for panther recovery,” Onorato said.

The rescued siblings were raised in a series of increasingly larger pens fenced into the forest surrounding the center in northeast Florida. Human interaction was extremely limited, leaving the panthers to hone their instincts hunting rabbits, armadillos and deer released into their pens. Once they got big enough to take down larger animals, they were deemed ready to try their luck in the wild.

The female panther was released in Collier County in February. Like her brother, she’s wearing a collar that allows researchers to track her movements.

The measure of success for her release will be whether she produces a litter of kittens, Onorato said.

The bar is lower for the male panther: surviving at least a year in a competitive landscape. Young males can be attacked and killed by larger, older panthers securing their territory. The home range of a male panther is about 200 square miles, an area the size of Disney World.

Instead of releasing the male into the panther’s core population in southwest Florida, researchers took him to Palm Beach County to the eastern edge of known panther breeding grounds.

“By putting him in areas where we suspect there’s low numbers of male panthers, we’re trying to give him a little bit of a head start,” Onorato said.

Panthers once roamed the entire southeastern U.S., but development has limited their habitat mostly to southwest Florida.

Vehicle strikes are blamed for most of the more than two dozen panther deaths reported last year. Seven panther deaths have been recorded so far this year, including five caused by vehicles.

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Florida panther information: http://www.floridapanthernet.org/

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Reported by JENNIFER KAY of the Associated Press in FLORIDA. Follow Jennifer Kay on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jnkay.

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With her escape-artist antics now caught on video, a horse in Michigan is being dubbed the “Houdini Horse” thanks to her knack for opening stall doors. See the original video here: http://youtu.be/o5snVfeb_Kw and the Associated Press coverage here: http://youtu.be/0ztM0evU01s

The 9-year-old horse named Mariska somehow learned to open latches at Misty Meadow Farms near Midland in central Michigan.

The farm’s co-owner, Sandy Bonem, posted a video online of the horse opening numerous locks. It catches how Mariska lets herself out, then unlocking stalls for other horses—just not her mother’s.

As of Monday, the YouTube video had more than 760,000 views.

Bonem tells the Saginaw News that Mariska, “doesn’t like to be locked in.”

Bonem says Mariska played with things in her mouth when she was young, and “she just kind of progressed.”

Reported by the ASSOCIATED PRESS from MIDLAND, Mich.

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Calling all crocodile experts — South African police say you’re needed to help capture thousands of crocs out on the lam.

Thousands of crocodiles escaped a breeding farm along a river on the South Africa-Botswana border when the farms’ gates were opened earlier this week to alleviate pressure caused by rising flood waters.

Efforts are now being made to wrangle the reptiles and get them back to the Rakwena Crocodile Farm, from where the vast majority escaped. Hangwani Mulaudzi, a spokesman for the police in Limpopo Province, said Friday that experts are needed right away to help sort out the crocodile crisis.

“Due to the number of crocodiles that have been washed away there is a need for expertise, people who have expertise to come and assist,” Mulaudzi said. “So we are just making appeals to anyone … who has knowledge of catching crocodiles to come and assist.”

Look for the glow: News reports from the scene show people hunting down smaller crocodiles at night, tying them up and taking them back to the Rakwena Crocodile Farm in northern South Africa. The crocodiles are easier to hunt at night because their eyes glow when hit with a beam of light. The farm’s website shows crocs up to 16 feet long, though crocs of all sizes escaped, Mulaudzi said.

It isn’t clear exactly how many crocodiles are on the loose. Mulaudzi said he believes around 10,000 from multiple farms remain on the loose. Officials from the Rakwena Crocodile Farm have been quoted in conflicting South African media accounts as saying either 7,000 escaped or up to 15,000 escaped. The farm originally held about 15,000 crocs. About 2,000 crocodiles have been returned to the farm, Mulaudzi said.The farm did not respond to an email or calls seeking comment.

Caution: Regardless of the exact number of farm-raised crocs now touring the wild, government officials and experts are calling on people who live near the remote region, which sits on the Limpopo River, to be careful around bodies of water. Many of the crocodiles are assumed to now be residing in the river.

“So far we are lucky. There has not been any emergencies,” said Mulaudzi. “And we are hopeful that nothing will happen. But with crocodiles all over in the river we are saying, please, we need assistance.”

Donald Strydom, a wildlife expert at South Africa’s Khamai Reptile Centre, said he doesn’t think the croc release will lead to a loss of human life. People are aware of the situation, he said, and crocodiles don’t naturally hunt humans.

“People must not go into a monster hunt and think these crocodiles are out to eat them,” Styrdom told South Africa’s eNews Channel Africa.

Mulaudzi said he did not think the Rakwena Crocodile Farm would face any charges from police for releasing the crocs, given the emergency nature of the flood. Flood waters are inundating northern South Africa and neighboring Mozambique. But Mulaudzi said the farm may face scrutiny from the Department of Environmental Affairs, which is helping with the reptile emergency.

The Rakwena Crocodile Farm website shows goods like crocodile-skin purses, belts and hats for sale. Crocodile meat is also available for purchase.

Reported by JASON STRAZIUSO of the Associated Press from JOHANNESBURG,South Africa.

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Today’s edition of Kid Scoop takes a look at hibernation, the energy-conserving deep sleep that many animals do through the winter. Of course the most famous hibernator out there is the groundhog, thanks to the world famous holiday — Groundhogs Day — coming up on Saturday, Feb. 2.

But really, how many of us really know much about groundhogs? In National Geographic’s profile on the critter, we learn that groundhogs are a 13-pound plant eater and the largest member of the squirrel family. Aside from being excellent diggers, they can also swim and have even been known to climb trees.

The scientific name of the groundhog is marmota monax and they are sometimes called woodchucks. They can be found throughout the eastern U.S., most of Canada and into Alaska.

Learn the basics of Groundhog Day. http://youtu.be/5HynP_QFf5o

Check out this groundhog video. http://youtu.be/DwEfhYv6O94

And have you ever wondered how many weather-predicting groundhogs there are? CGP Grey has the answers! http://youtu.be/7-Nl4JFDLOU

Also check out this report from 2012 about how Groundhog Day organizers often face trouble from their furry little mascots.

Primary photo by FurryScalyMan via Flicr.com

What is Kid Scoop? It’s a special page that appears every Monday in The York Dispatch and other local newspapers. Aside from its main feature and the Writing Corner, it includes games, puzzles and jokes.

Get your copy of Kid Scoop in today’s edition of The York Dispatch, and be sure to assemble your own Write On! entry and submit it to NIE@ync.com. We’ll run every entry here!

Of course, you can submit those entries, and anything else you want, for publication here on the Junior Dispatch. Send your JD items to juniordispatch@yorkdispatch.com. Learn about what you can submit here.

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A camera that records seal-pupping activities on a remote Maine island began streaming live to the public Thursday in what’s believed to be the first live-streaming camera at an East Coast seal-pupping site. Watch it here.

Similar high-definition cameras have been set up around the world in recent years to capture the activities of eagles, polar bears, loons, black bears and other animals. The camera on Seal Island, about 20 miles off the midcoast of Maine, provides views of gray seals that migrate to the island each year to give birth.

It’s expensive and difficult for scientists to visit gray seal-pupping grounds because they are on islands, with the births taking place in the winter when ocean conditions can be inhospitable.

Watch and learn: Seal Island’s tower-mounted camera gives scientists a firsthand look into the progression of seal-pupping season so they can gather information such as when peak pupping occurs and how long it takes seal pups to molt, said Stephanie Wood, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It also allows the public to watch “nature in action,” she said.

The 65-acre island is owned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and managed in cooperation with the National Audubon Society. Audubon, in conjunction with explore.org, set up two cameras on the island last spring to stream live video of clown-like Atlantic puffins that make the island their home each summer.

With the puffins gone for the season, Audubon offered to let NOAA keep one of the cameras on the island to record the gray seals that swim there each fall.

The colony: Seal Island is the second-largest pupping ground for gray seals in the U.S., with more than 500 living there during the six-week season from December into early February. (Muskeget Island off southern Massachusetts has the largest breeding colony.)

The project is funded by explore.org, a philanthropic organization in Santa Monica, Calif., and a division of the Annenberg Foundation, with the aim of connecting people to nature. The video can be seen on explore.org’s website.

“With the new seal pupping cam, we are helping people escape the urban squalor and, if only for a moment, reconnect with nature in its purest state,” Charlie Annenberg, founder of explore.org, said in a statement.

Wood and explore.org say they don’t know of any other camera that streams live video of gray seals giving birth. Gordon Waring, who heads the seal research program at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., said he’s not aware of any cameras either, but that it’s possible they might be used in other countries.

Scientists and explore.org producers can operate the camera remotely—tilting it, moving it side to side and zooming in and out—to get better views of the 300-pound mother seals and the newborn pups that are covered in thick, white fur. The camera also provides shots of seals quarreling among themselves and interacting with bald eagles.

The camera also will allow biologists to identify adult seals that have been tagged or branded elsewhere and learn more about their movements and life history, Wood said.

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Reported by CLARKE CANFIELD of the Associated Press from PORTLAND, Maine.
Online: http://www.explore.org

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About a dozen killer whales trapped under sea ice appeared to be free after the ice shifted, village officials in Canada’s remote north said Thursday, while residents who feared they would get stuck elsewhere hired a plane to track them down.

The whales’ predicament in the frigid waters of Hudson Bay made international headlines, and locals had been planning a rescue operation with chainsaws and drills before the mammals slipped away.

Tommy Palliser said two hunters from remote Inukjuak village reported that the waters had opened up around the area where the cornered whales had been bobbing frantically for air around a single, truck-sized hole in the ice. Officials said shifting winds might have pushed the ice away.

“It’s certainly good news—that’s good news for the whales,” said Palliser, a business adviser with the regional government.

But fears remained that the whales might have been trapped elsewhere by the ever-moving ice. Some villagers were skeptical the killer whales had escaped harm, so the community hired an airplane to scan the region Thursday for signs of the pod.

Mark O’Connor of the regional marine wildlife board said the aerial search did not locate the orcas, but he noted that large swaths of ice-free water were seen in the area.

“So as far as I could tell, the emergency, for sure, is averted,” said O’Connor, the board’s director of wildlife management.

“Whether the whales have found a passage all the way to the Hudson Strait, we probably will never know.”

Locals said the whales had been trapped for at least two days. A recent, sudden drop in temperature may have caught the whales off guard, leaving them trapped The cornered animals were first seen Tuesday and appeared to have less energy by late Wednesday, Palliser said.

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans said government icebreakers were too far from the area to smash the ice to free the whales, Inukjuak Mayor Peter Inukpuk said Wednesday.

After that, Palliser said, locals had agreed to try to enlarge the breathing hole in the ice and cut a second opening using chainsaws and drills.

“We certainly had our prayers with them last night during our meeting,” he said.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans issued a statement Thursday saying two scientists were en route to gather information and will monitor the situation. Ice-trapped marine mammals are not unusual in the region.

Pete Ewins, an expert in Arctic wildlife at the World Wildlife Fund Canada, said the orca were still 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from where they should be at this time of year.

“They got stuck (in Hudson Bay) and they’re unlikely to get out,” said Ewins, adding that killer whales are not accustomed to ice.

“These guys are on the edge and they might not make it through.”

Reported by the Associated Press from MONTREAL, Quebec.

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