By Jim Knippenberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

They're not even here yet, and already Cincinnati's cicadas are getting national publicity. Consider:

SNAPPY JINGLES

Click to download MP3s: • Original Snappy Cicada jingle from 1987 • New Snappy Cicada jingle Jingles courtesy Snappy Tomato Pizza.

Special section: • Cicada watch

• The April 19 edition of US News & World Report had a glowing blurb about Seventeen Year Itch, the cicada themed CD featuring four local bands.

Check it out: "This time around the bugs will get star treatment on a new CD, Seventeen Year Itch. Featuring cicada-themed songs and cicada sounds, it was commissioned by a Cincinnati civic group to highlight the return of the city's 5 billion insect denizens. Most of the songs focus on the pathos of the cicada's love life. "They've only got a month to, you know, do their business, and then they die," observes guitarist Jacob Heintz of the rock group Buckra."

• Stories are in the works at National Geographic Traveler and PRWEEK.

• Fuji TV out of Japan has been in touch with Raymond "Buz" Buse at the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce about the possibility of sending a film crew.

• CBS Evening News with Dan Rather informed Buse it will send a crew this week to shoot footage for a preview story. The crew will return a few weeks later to further document the invasion.

• Buse has also been in contact - frequent contact - with Amy Rosner, a CBS Sunday Morning producer, about the possibility of sending humorist Bill Geist in to do a piece on the invasion.

Buse, meanwhile, asks that Cincinnatians with cicada mania stories e-mail him at bbuse@gccc.com so he can feed them to the national media.