Deadly insect... or just dumb kids?

[Rob]

Linkage (http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=science&cat=animals_and_insects)

First there was the girl who fell off her bike fleeing a flying cicada. Then a boy trying to swat a cicada out of the air with a baseball bat instead hit his friend in the nose. The final straw came when another child hurt his hand trying to squish a cicada under a car's tires. Dr. Ray Baker of Cincinnati Children's Hospital was convinced -- cicadas can be a safety hazard to children.


Is may be just me, but I think the real problem is not the cicadas, but stupid kids. Of course, I am not a doctor so I may be just misinterpreting swinging a baseball bat near another person in an attempt to strike a small bug as foolish rather then an attack by massively ferocious bug.

[Edit]
This one is my favorite. Not in any sadistic way and I really am sorry someone was hurt, but at the same time...

"We had a stab wound to the arm from a kid who was trying to kill a cicada on the arm of another child but unfortunately he was using a knife," Baker added.

[DanTheManPR]

:wtf:

[Terry Penrod]

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I read that article earlier today too and could not understand why doctors are even making references too or statements about the insects. Those kids obviously caused their own injuries or injuries to others doing some really stupid things. So what if they were all trying to kill the same kind of bug? They could all have been trying to kill gerbils and the same things would have happened.

Cheers, Terry

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[Artman317]

heh, that reminded me of that soldier trying to shoot the albatross on the ship on "Master and Commander" and accidentally shooting the doctor.
Yea, some people just can't resist killing stuff.

[Tavo]

The world's youth has entered into a new level of stupidity!

[Kalbrecht]

I think you guys are taking the doctor's statements a little off. The doctor noticed an increase in serious injuries in children due to the cicadas appearing. Cicadas aren't small bugs, and the sudden appearance of them will excite and scare kids.

And when kids get excited and or scared, they tend to overreact and do stupid things.

He was just trying to warn parents to tell their kids that cicadas really are nothing more than normal, oversized bugs that won't hurt them. And to watch out more carefully during times like this.

To a kid - cicadas are pretty big bugs.

[Cloudw4lker]

Cicada? ME CRUSH! (from a 6'5.5" giant)

those kids are REALLY stupid. They need to do what people on my grad trip did, there are these tennis racket things that have electricity going through them(batteries) and you just hit the bugs. Looks like fried cicada tonight!

[Rob]

Kalbrecht, the girl who fell off her bike while fleeing from the cicada is something I can understand. Like you said, kids over-react.

But, the three other examples, a baseball bat, trying to kill one under a car and trying to stab another with a knife... that is stupidity. That is not taking the doctors words the wrong way. Why does a kid playing with a knife to begin with? Why is a kid playing near and then under a car? I can understand why a kid has a baseball bat, but to swing it near another person?

The cicadas may all be a common denominator... but so does a lack of common sense.

[Terry Penrod]

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As a quick follow-up, here is a link to a related news story about this astonishing, once-every-17-years natural event:

http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=science&cat=animals_and_insects

Having lived in Maryland during two different cicada spawns - once as a little kid in the country and once as a young adult in an urban area close to rural land and water - I can attest to how amazing it is to see, hear and literally feel a virtual air force of these things rise from the ground and fly en masse across the countryside. It is a very intense, dramatic experience. But as all parents in that whole eastern seaboard swath SHOULD already know and what they SHOULD have laready taught their kids is that these insects are quite harmless. They do not bite, sting or attack people and are interested in one and only one thing - mating with each other. So the best advice is to simply turn and duck if you walk into a swarm of them. They will fly right around you and pay no attention to you whatsoever.

In regards to the reason why they might cause some minor problems for human beings, I think that it is stupid and/or lazy parents who fail to tell their own kids that there is nothing to fear from cicadas and that it is NOT okay to go around randomly killing them with knives, baseball bats or cars.

Cheers, Terry

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