There’s been a lot of chatter about how cicadas are edible – if you have a strong stomach. It is recommended that you pick the newly-hatched bugs off the tree, the ones that are still soft and white, rather than dealing with the “ripe” adults. I collected a snack-sized bag of them and put it in the freezer, which is suggested as a more humane way of killing them.
So far, so good, but when I took the bag out of the fridge, I took the coward’s way out, and decided to feed them to the snapping turtles. The only thing they’ve ever taken from me as food is store-bought white bread, so 1) they looked close enough to scraps of S-BWB that they’d take them without question, and 2)I figured they would really like these delicacies.
Well, was I ever wrong! One turtle did accept the first cicada I offered (Shades of Terry Pratchett’s Rat-on-a-Stick!) , but spat it out immediately, and none of the others would even come near them.
There must be some sort of telepathy going on!
I just dumped the rest of the bugs into the pond. Maybe the snappers would change their minds, and if not, somebody downstream got a treat.
We have four turtles in the pond right now, which is at least five too many, and two of them insist upon me feeding them more or less by hand. I put a hunk of bread on the end of a lilac twig and they will swim over and take it. Oddly enough, they are both very gentle when they do this. However, if I don’t move fast enough, they will haul themselves out of the pond and come after me. Nothing will get your attention faster than being barefoot and in the vicinity of a snapper!
thisendoftheswamp 
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