(With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft – as I walked this morning listening to the cicada hum, the noise gave me a creepy feeling of dread, and I wondered how he would write about the bugs that surrounded me.)
The din continues again today. Though last night’s rain has supressed their energy, they drone in the distance, and click and whine in the nearby trees. It’s not so bad on Scoville Avenue, but nearer to Thatcher Woods it becomes impossible to hear, even to think.
At every sunny patch the dirt is pocked with holes from their emergence two weeks ago, and enlivened with the shadow of their flitting courtship overhead, and the sound of castanets, or maracas.
Two weeks ago, we enjoyed the novelty. A morning walk would show a tree sporting husks from which they had crawled after they rose from the ground. Some were white and small, with stunted wings. Others were larger with two glaring red eyes (and three more less apparent ones, though we didn’t know it at the time.) But all were nearly silent, and moved at a crawl, if they moved at all. We didn’t yet know that the white ones were just awakening from their slumber, and would pump their blood into these stunted wings and develop a hard carapace over the next few days.
In 2011, at their last visit, they were barely noticed, and in 2007 they were slightly louder. Jonah recalls hearing a broken motor noise in the garage, and finding on investigation that one had been crushed by the descending door, but was still clicking its rage from under the gasket. But though thirteen and seventeen are prime numbers, they coincide every now and then.
The last time, in 1803, Thomas Jefferson was in office. This year both broods arose together. Their confluence is here, in northern Illinois. Simultaneous emergence has yet to overwhelm us, but it remains a strain. Hamilton Chang reports from our northern station that yesterday at peak, his telephone alerted that the noise had exceeded safe levels.
The seriousness of the situation was first clear on the third day of the emergence. The broods had selected a tree on East Avenue for a convergence. They had not yet hardened sufficiently to sing, but they were beginning to fly. The base of the tree was ankle-deep in empty hulls, and the trunk was covered with them, spread in a diamond pattern, with their red eyes topmost, spaced a hands’ breath apart. A few white ones were still struggling from their casings, and brown ones with stubby wet wings still unfolding had begun a slow climb to the canopy.
The dog had not yet discovered that they were edible, but the trees were filled with sated birds and burping squirrels. No matter – cicadas are prolific, and their numbers are estimated in the trillions.
One cannot call their patience infinite. Two hundred four months is a long time, but not so long that I will miss the next emergence. As our planet grows warmer, they rouse earlier, so it has been perhaps three weeks shy of their traditional rest.
Perhaps the hardiness of the larger trees renders it unnecessary, or perhaps the cost, but only the smallest plantings are shrouded to protect their vulnerable shoots. The churchyard is full of these phantoms, looking like inverted chandeliers pendant from the earth, sheet-covered until the next gala.
Is this the peak? I cannot tell, but it is difficult to conceive more noise, more creatures. Moxie has had her fill of them, or perhaps she has realized that her dog-gut is not the best place for them. Today I take Lynda to the airport, and she will fly east away from the invasion. I remain here to secure the house and protect it from the remains of the invasion.
I will be alone here for the next few days, and will then lock and seal the entrances, and drive eastward across the devastation. If this is not yet the peak, then I know not what will become of this place. I only know we must leave.
Meanwhile, through closed windows and with plugged ears, I watch the cicadas fly their mating dance, suck the sap from the trees, and drill their seed-holes in the saplings. I will not be able to see the emergence of grubs, their drop to the ground, and their seventeen-year sleep until they next emerge.
(June 5, 2024)
Copyright Noah Shlaes 2024