00:00Well, the warm weather brought out billions of cicadas this spring, and now they're slowly dying off.
00:06AccuWeather's Emmy Victor is live in Chicago with how you can benefit from the end of their life cycle.
00:13Emmy?
00:16Bernie, I can't believe summer is already here, and now the cicadas are finally dying off.
00:21Now, we're not exactly out of the woods just yet, though.
00:24If you've been noticing some bug guts on your shoe, I know that sounds a little bit gross.
00:28Or maybe you just notice your yard smells a little bit funny.
00:31Then you probably have dead cicadas around.
00:34These periodical cicadas made their presence known in parts of the Northeast and the Midwest this year.
00:40And now it's time to say goodbye to them.
00:42So if you have a lot of dead bugs in your yard, you may be wondering what to do with their remains.
00:47Well, instead of throwing them in the garbage, you can treat them like fallen leaves and keep them on your lawn or gardens.
00:53Cicadas actually make great fertilizer.
00:55As for the ones you find on your sidewalks or driveways or even your gutters,
00:59you can take advantage of a dry, sunny day and rake them onto your grass.
01:05You know, the best way to do it is if you've got a blower or if you've got a broom, anything like that,
01:10to get them up off of there and get them into the turf where they're going to add those nutrients back into the soil is a good thing.
01:19If you don't want to leave a lot of dead cicadas around because of their appearance or maybe their smell,
01:24another idea is digging a hole in your yard to place them in, and that way you're still giving your soil plenty of nutrients.
01:30Mowing your lawn, another great idea.
01:32That also helps decompose them faster and also gets rid of that odor sooner.
01:37So all in all, this is a mess that can certainly clean itself up,
01:40and it will take another few years before we have to deal with a lot of cicadas again.
Comments