The 17-year cicadas – it’s their time in the sun.
Their arrival is a consequential marker – albeit a noisy one – on nature’s calendar.
By my very unofficial reckoning and experience as an informal nature watcher the little buggers should have emerged from their subterranean world last week and should be in full force right now.
We live in the woods and this is our third invasion, so I know what I’m talking about. Our first encounter, since we moved to Upper Bucks, occurred in 1987 and our second in 2004.
These special creatures that visit every 17 years have been dubbed Brood X, and they make no bones about announcing their presence – continuously – until they leave us in peace. There are other broods that appear at other specified intervals but these guys are royal pains-in-the-ears. They turn out in massive numbers – I said massive. Actually like a Biblical plague, but they’re virtually harmless.
During both earlier encounters we had to close our windows and turn the television volume to unknown decibels. We still had to strain to hear voices not emitted by winged creatures. Even so, the score was rather like Cicadas, 25, Humans, 1.
During their visits we share our trees, our plants, our home, our lawns, our airspace with these sexy little bugs that spend their infancy and adolescence in darkness, feeding off the roots of our locust trees until they emerge and begin their deafening search for mates.
They crawl all over each other, our trees, our siding, and us, before flying from tree to tree, flashing their bright iridescent little wings in their desperate search for love.
I met my first cicadas in 1987, when our son and one of his friends arrived at my kitchen door, their hands filled with what looked like brown marbles. They had found them while digging, heaven knows why, in an outgrown sandbox and asked me what they were.
I recall my response ran something like, “Ugh, I don’t know, but don’t you dare bring them in the house.” Not long after that the bugs appeared in droves.
What followed that year and during the cicadas’ next visit in 2004 brought both dread and fascination in our house as we were virtually engulfed by the natural process.
First, we saw the holes in the ground in early May, and around the 15th, the invasion began. In just days our trees and everything else in sight were covered with bugs and the shells they shed as they fought their way to the leaves above. One of our exterior walls was blanketed with them.
I found it all fascinating – and oddly reassuring. With all the chaos we face daily the thought of nature doing its own relentless thing at its own slow and deliberate pace is a comforting one – something we can depend on – even if it’s noisy. Their singing can climb to lawn mower levels – as high as 100 decibels, but all this has some funny aspects.
A neighbor of mine has an aunt who lives in Hyannis, where, she says, “It’s so quiet at night you can hear your blood moving. She spent a week with me and didn’t sleep a wink.”
Our woods are silent only when snow-covered. In the summer, the outdoor sounds are constant and mostly pleasant. Our son-in-law, though, grew up in South Dakota, and couldn’t believe how noisy it is when he’s here in the summer.
We love him – he’s a great guy – but we have to laugh when we consider he’s now scheduled to visit us when the cicadas are going full throttle. I think he’s in for a big surprise. Our daughter said she already warned him. I asked. “Did you tell him they crunch when you walk on them?” Her response was a typical, “Oh, Mom.”
I think that childhood cicada-dig made an impression on my son, too. He seemed duly impressed enough with a news article he just found on cicadas to email it to me. “They’re coming,” he said ominously.
He even sent us a map indicating where the Brood X guys were expected to show up this year. We in Bucks are definitely targeted. He lives in New York’s Westchester County and I think he wanted to rub it in that he might be cicada-free. I think I’ll ask him to come for a visit while they’re chirping.
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