CHICAGO (STNG) - When it comes to cicadas, can the bug spray, Chicago officials said Thursday.
With the 17-year cicadas expected to emerge en masse later this month, officials cautioned that using household pesticides on the creepy creatures won’t do any good.
And because pets and wild birds eat the winged, red-eyed cicadas, pesticides could make animals sick, officials said.
“It’s just introducing a toxin into nature unnecessarily,’’ said Matt Smith, spokesman for the Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department.
The cicadas will perch on trees and make slits into branches to lay eggs, but damage to vegetation should be minimal, experts say. They are also harmless to humans, experts say.
“The first reaction is to reach for that can of bug spray. Don’t do it. Shoo ’em away with a broom, or cover [young trees and shrubs] with a net,’’ said Smith.
Some cicadas have a natural predator in Sphecius speciosus -- the so-called cicada killer wasps that sting cicadas and carry them to their nests for food. But the wasps likely will emerge in the Chicago area too late to do much battle against the 17-year, or periodical, cicadas, said Phil Nixon of the University of Illinois Extension.
Wasps “may be able to pick off a few of the hangovers,” he said. But most of the estimated 5 billion periodical cicadas that will emerge in northern Illinois and Indiana already will have gone through their above-ground life cycles by the time the wasps arrive, he said.
The 17-year cicadas are expected to emerge from underground late May 21 or early May 22, though a few early risers have already been spotted, including in Glenview and, Nixon said, in parts of Lake County.
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