It feels like they just started emerging, and now they are starting to die off in massive numbers. The car port was littered with their bodies this morning. A human life may be three score and ten (four score if granted the vigor) but their lives are shy of one score and the vast majority of it is spent below ground in what I have heard described as quasi-hibernation.
The first time in my life I experienced the periodic cicada, I was about 8 years old. Now the smell of their decaying carcasses takes me right back that summer of my childhood in Baltimore.
I am enthralled by these winged creatures. There is so much to wonder about. How do they count off exactly 17 years so that they emerge on schedule every time? What do they think about life in the sun after all that time underground? If they could, would they delay coming out if it meant a few more years of life - albeit in cold darkness - or are they satisfied with what they are allotted?
Even if I get a full four score, their next emergence will likely be the last time I will see them. Probably we won’t have the answers to these questions by then. But beyond the wonder, there is still so much to love about them. I love the sound they make as they sing in the trees – a sound that I would describe as the sound of the USS Enterprise’s phaser banks firing in the original Star Trek series. I love the comical expression of their huge red eyes, each with a tiny black dot. I love their delicate cellophane wings etched with a black letter W. I was told when I was a child the W signified that there would be 17 more years of war. Supposedly, if it were a P there would be 17 years of peace. I have only seen them with a W. So they have been dead on so far.
Most of all, I love the way they fly. When in flight they look like something pre-historic. Something that I would imagine flying around among the dinosaurs. Their wings seem too insubstantial for their bodies, which is perhaps what lends their flight a kind of clumsiness. Their flights are short. They are airborne just until they quickly bump in a tree, a person, or the ground and then they just stop and cling as if surprised at the interruption but in no hurry to take off again. As when I go into another room to get something but then don’t remember what it was and just stand there blankly for a few seconds hoping it will come to me, they don’t seem to remember where they were going when they took off 15 seconds ago.
When I am out on my daily walks they often crash into my head, my legs, my arms, and sometimes they dive into a bag I am carrying. If you gently brush them off, sometimes they fly away, but often they just fall to the ground and stay there. I hate to attribute human traits to other animals but unlike say an ant, or a spider, or a squirrel, they just don’t seem to have much sense of purpose. And that makes sense, because in their brief few weeks above ground, they don’t eat or even drink much. They don’t fight. If something wants to eat them, they have no defense mechanisms. Mostly they have sex, lay eggs if they are female, and die. In between there is a bit of aimless flying and lots of bumping into things.
Now in mid-June already their singing is already greatly diminished. I still see them flying around but many more are dead or twitching on the ground, to the great delight of the birds eating them up or the ants I have seen hauling away a few headless thoraxes. In a few more weeks, they will be almost completely gone.
Meanwhile, the eggs the females deposited into the branches of our trees will start to hatch and the nymphs will drop down into the soil to sleep, to dream and to sip the dew from the roots. If they and I survive the next 17 years, we will meet with joyous song in 2038.