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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First there was the girl who fell off her bike fleeing a flying cicada. Then a boy trying to swat a cicada out of the air with a baseball bat instead hit his friend in the nose.

The thumb-sized insects are harmless, but they are large, noisy and clumsy. They climb out of their underground homes en masse after 17 years of slow development with only one goal in mind -- finding a mate.

Several children fell off bikes, Baker said. "We had a concussion, a 9-year-old who was fleeing a cicada on her bicycle and fell off," he said.

Another child hit his head on a brick wall while he was running away from one of the insects.

"We had a stab wound to the arm from a kid who was trying to kill a cicada on the arm of another child but unfortunately he was using a knife," Baker added.

"Another kid tried to kick one under a lawn mower and cut his foot, and we saw a crush injury to the hand when a kid tried to put a cicada under the wheels of a moving car."

All parents can do is try and supervise their children and remind them that that the cicadas are harmless, Baker advised.

"There's a lot on the news, but I think that just gets kids kind of excited," he said. "Kids don't always do what they are told."

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&ncid=1896&e=6&u=/nm/20040514/us_nm/health_cicadas_dc_4