After all, cicada broods emerge basically every year. The last brood, “Brood IX,” made its appearance last year in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia in relative anonymity. What makes “Brood X” such a media cause c?lebre? One could be the brood’s reputation as the “Big Brood,” certainly. But I can’t help wondering if the brood’s effect on a particular media-heavy, navel-gazing location isn’t also affecting its press:
After all, it’s not every day something shows up to rival the bellowing and croaking down Foggy Bottom way! Once every 17 years, in fact.
