<P> Magicicada species are edible when cooked . They have historically been eaten by Native Americans, who roasted them in hot ovens, stirring them until they were well browned . </P> <P> Charles Lester Marlatt wrote in 1907: </P> <P> The use of the newly emerged and succulent cicadas as an article of human diet has merely a theoretical interest, because, if for no other reason, they occur too rarely to have any real value . There is also the much stronger objection in the instinctive repugnance which all insects seem to inspire as an article of food to most civilized nations . Theoretically, the Cicada, collected at the proper time and suitably dressed and served, should be a rather attractive food . The larvae have lived solely on vegetable matter of the cleanest and most whole - some sort, and supposedly, therefore, would be much more palatable and suitable for food than the oyster, with its scavenger habit of living in the muddy ooze of river bottoms, or many other animals which are highly prized and which have not half so clean a record as the periodical Cicada . </P>

Every 17 years swarms of cicadas emerge from the ground