We East Coast residents have been hearing the warnings for some days now: a brood of 17-year cicadas (Magicicadas) is due to arrive at any moment! Prepare to be overwhelmed!
Well, Saturday afternoon I saw the first heralds of the brood, at least the ones who have been lurking beneath Lila’s lawn for nearly two decades.
Lila’s first cicada of the season.
It’s really something to think about! When these little bugs were hatched and burrowed underground, the World Trade Center still stood, Bill Clinton was in office, Justin Bieber was probably still in diapers, Michelle Kwan was racking up a passel of gold medals, and NATO had peacekeeping troops in Bosnia. And all the while since then, these little guys were here, just waiting for us to move in so we could witness this day.
Okay, they weren’t actually waiting for us. They were waiting for Saturday, when the ground temperature apparently reached 64°F, and now they get to fly forth in search of mates, in one big frenetic burst of activity. This will last several weeks, and then – having mated and laid their eggs – they will die, and things will be quiet again for a while.
There are actually a dozen different broods around the country; here in the DC area, we have Brood II (among others). No cicadas for you this year? Fear not! If you’re in the eastern half of the U.S., just consult this handy chart to see when you can expect your local brood to burst forth and entertain you… or gross you out, depending on your feelings about largish, red-eyed insects everywhere, thundering in the trees at night.
If the brood is as huge as predicted, I’m sure I’ll be ready for them to go back underground in a couple of weeks. But if the Brood X experience of 2004 is any guide, the swarms might not be as dramatic as expected. We were in a different home in the DC area at the time, and there certainly did seem to be a lot of nymphs emerging all at once… at first. But the predicted swarms never materialized. The reason? Development!
One good illustration of just how enormously the Washington area has expanded is to look at aeronautical charts. For pilots flying by visual rules, populated areas are shaded in yellow in the same actual shape that the pilot will see lighted up at night. Here is the Washington chart from 1950:
Courtesy NOAA
Here is the same area from the 2012 chart. You can see that the previously very limited yellow area has bloated to fill practically the entire area. This is what is lit up at night today, and of course that all represents former fields and forests that are now suburbs, highways and shopping centers (and a new airport: Dulles did not exist in 1950). Obviously, churning up the ground for construction purposes wipes out the underground cicada nymphs, and there has been an awful lot of that going on around here in the last 60-odd years, as these charts show us.
So I’m rooting for Brood X, which was not spectacular but still hanging in there in 2004, and now – for Brood II. Bring ’em on!
joaneee
May 13, 2013
NEVER will I forget the cicadas! Age 22, married with children, we had chosen a townhome with a mature forest of considerable width to a suburban major street, stretching for miles of beauty. Baby buggies were in vogue, fortunately with a screen that snapped around the hood to protect the babies from mosquitoes. To keep my sanity, I pushed that buggy for hours a day, keeping myself Esther Williams slim in the process.
A noise arose from the forest, meant to drive the human inhabitants to the insane asylum, and huge flying creatures with red eyes in the thousands filled the air. It seemed their main attraction were my babies, safe under the netting, but nonetheless fascinating to land on as close to as possible. I would run, screaming I remember – loud enough to alert police — pushing that buggy. Never scream as this calls attention to you as they are curious. To have neighbors shout to be heard from their windows that my hair was covered with them was God’s test as to how strong a love I had for my children. Would I leave them on that sidewalk as the main attraction, dashing into an screen door I could find, or continue to run screaming but pushing them home? Getting into the house with babies – but without the cicadas who thought my hair was their tree trunk – was an impossibility. Do you know how LARGE these things are? The buzzing — and I am still convinced that they are highly attracted to comely young women who scream — still resounds this many years later. I may think I have recovered but 17 years later, I find their descendants have already heard of me and stare at me on the screens. No wonder I have aged . . . I totally blame the traumas of them lying in wait for me — and the staring at me with the huge eyes, calling all their friends with the buzz that never ends.
I have 26 trees of great beauty in my back yard. But even without them, I know the story of the screaming woman has been passed on to suceeding generations. They will find me. They always do.
The Color of Lila
May 13, 2013
Oh, Joan. She who faces down grizzlies and climbs steep precipices, braves moose and polar bears and frigid Arctic waves — have we finally discovered your secret weakness, your Kryptonite? Well, even Indiana Jones had his fear of snakes.
Hmm, yes, they are kind of large. Maybe I should have held a ruler up to the critter on the flower here. Probably over two inches long.
The Color of Lila
May 13, 2013
PS, Joan, you may want to start planning a vacation for Spring 2024… Just checked the maps and in your area, it seems that the 17-year Brood XIII and the 13-year Brood XIX will emerge together.
Next year… The smallish Brood III and in 2015, the larger Brood XXIII. Time to break out your pith helmet with the mosquito netting!
joaneee
May 13, 2013
I am afraid of bugs to the point that when my husband – in the oil business was being sent to Houston for good, I knew I would be in an asylum in days . . .and he had to turn it down. But I had a child entomologist who filled his bedroom with moth cocoons, walking sticks that I had to feed live food to when he was away, and things that were amazing – like goliath beetles – that I encouraged as he won state championships on but only were all right in captivity. As long as they could not escape was the rule.
Praying mantises — who no one sees — seem to like me and one will sit on my screen in summer – all of 4 inches long and watch me for hours. I will not kill a living thing so the word must be out — but I beg them to not get ON me as all the asylums are now closed —
But I too looked at your map — and saw they were on the move first in 2015 here . . . and I know the word is out that I can be singled out as always as their “friend”. Big Sur sounds very good for Spring of that year!
Rho
May 13, 2013
I hate all bugs. However, when I was a kid, my dad took us to the borscht belt, I used catch salamanders, jars of them, also put them in my pockets. They used to call me the Salamander Kid.
The Color of Lila
May 13, 2013
Salamander Kid, you would be right at home on our back porch where we have blue-tailed skinks slithering around every summer.
jsholmes
May 13, 2013
Joan, I spent 26 years in TX (altogether 5 in Houston); bugs were unbelievable and I often referred to them as Texas Pets. Needless to say when we moved to SoCal I was happy to experience the absence of of bugs in the environment.
Footnote: I associate the sound of cicadas with calming night sounds while spending warm summer nights at my grandparents in my native Indiana
joaneee
May 13, 2013
You’re originally from INDIANA?? — almost neighbors then . . . and it is so close that we dine out there about every three weeks. We have tonight and every night what I presume are crickets in every direction and the sound never ceases. Never see a sign of anything in the day . . . well, except darling bunnies who pose in our lawn and bring a smile to my face.
But back to bugs, right after marriage our first home was at Ft. Sill, OK — and crickets were knee deep in the produce section of the grocery as well as home — and my screams carried everywhere. I hate fast-moving things more than anything — and that experience killed me on the central south forever. Other than that — as Lila says — I am pretty fearless so I am not a complete loss. Get the first issue of Pure WOW, the new version, today? They had book reviews — and sadly I didn’t write them. Such is life. Their loss. Joan
The Color of Lila
May 14, 2013
Oh, Fort Sill! I had a 10-week class there way back at the start of my career and I used to drive out to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge just outside the post, park the car and sit on the boulders and watch the bison for hours. Ha, no internet in those days… and I found it very relaxing / refreshing.
I don’t recall any cricket problems… ?
Lauriate Roly.
May 14, 2013
From what I have been reading here, these Cicadas must be a different breed from those I know about. I’ve always called the noisy bugs I hear every summer “Heat Bugs”. Someone corrected me telling me they are Cicadas, but obviously the Cicadas (Heat Bugs) I am familiar with are not the same as those described in this article which apparently only appear every seventeen years. The dreadfully noisy nuisances around here aren’t limited to a seventeen year schedule to drive me crazy: they are here every year. I hear them but I have never seen one. These make an awful racket, sounding like a busy table-saw. I should add that the Heat Bug only makes a noise when the weather is really almost unbearably hot. What Lila and Joanneee describe must be dreadful and the constant noise must become unbearable for the four or five weeks the Cicadas stick around. That would certainly drive anyone bonkers. No wonder you look for escape routes to quieter places.
The sequence of Joaneee and the baby in a carriage, with Cicadas matted in her hair – just horrible: puts me in mind of Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds”.
Praise the glorious butterflies.
The Color of Lila
May 14, 2013
Ha! Lauriate, yes, there are annual cicadas too, and probably just as noisy!
The Color of Lila
May 15, 2013
UPDATE, all, Wednesday the 15th was a really warm day after a couple of nights in the mid-30s (and a frost warning… in May!). Tonight, they are emerging in force. Standing outside you hear the munching of leaves and the scratchy noises of their crawling and shedding their last nymph skins to emerge with their new wings. Shine a light up into the trees… and they are EVERYWHERE. It seems that this will be a big group after all.
The Color of Lila
May 22, 2013
UPDATE II, Wednesday the 22nd. There are a few newly transformed cicadas every night and I continue to sweep cicadas and their empty shells away from our front door every morning, but it’s nothing like the mass arrival of a week ago. All day long there is a “flying saucer noise” emanating from the trees but we have not had to fear poor Joan’s experience of getting them tangled in our hair.
It’s a lot of cicadas, it seems like more than I recall from Brood X in 2004 – but I think these, too, have been reduced somewhat by all the development around here in the intervening years.