Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)
If you read our first coverage of cicada swarm Brood X and were struck with jealousy that the East Coast’s raccoons, frogs, snakes, squirrels, and dogs get to enjoy an “orgy of eating” without you, fret not: There’s still time to get out there and start stuffing handfuls of screaming, fuck-crazed bugs into your maw before the swarm retreats back underground.
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The Atlantic, the august outlet recently mentioned here for their probing investigation into the depths of the anus’ evolutionary history, has investigated the many ways to get into cicada-eating in an article published yesterday. Right from the jump, it has some pretty good tips, like: Try to eat your bugs air-fried.
The Atlantic
If you must eat them, go for air-fried.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Can you think of a good reason not to try a cicada, other than “ew”? I’ve posed this question to numerous friends and family, even my partner’s extended relatives, now that Brood X is swarming parts of the United States. Eating cicadas just makes sense, even for someone like me, who’s been a stalwart vegetarian since basically the last time they appeared, in 2004. They’re a bountiful and easy-to-forage protein source, they very likely won’t make you sick, and they’ve made appearances on some Native American and Chinese dinner tables for centuries. (Even Aristotle ate them.) Plenty of evidence suggests that they don’t feel pain the way other creatures do, if that kind of thing is important to you. I watched