A Great Noise Cometh

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

With the US Presidential race sticking tightly to the scripts put in play by backroom politicians and party bosses months ago, there really is no surprising "news" on the presidential race.  People are playing with the political cards which they have been dealt - from stacked decks - and feeling as though they have at least a bit of control over their own destinies.  Bless their hearts.

One of the more interesting real news stories which I have been following involves cicadas, those large, big-winged, hard-bodied insects that cut through the serenity of spring and summer nights with their screechy love songs and incessant chatter.  But those big bugs do more that just make a racket, they also shed their skins and leave their exoskeletons hanging from tree trunks, branches, and even the siding of houses in eerie, ghost-like, hard-skinned representations of themselves.  Cicadas are unusual creatures that often attract the attention of humans, especially kids.

My father and his generation called them "jar flies," and though I never definitively learned why, I suspect that a common childhood amusement during the era of the Great Depression, was to capture cicadas and keep them in jars - for the noise and maybe to watch them shed their skins.  I investigated the tern "jar fly" and learned that it is still relatively common parlance for a cicada.

Cicadas lay their eggs underground, and the larvae of the cicadas live underground surviving off of roots and things of that sort for years.  One very large "brood" of cicadas live underground for seventeen years before tunneling their way to the surface in the spring when the ground warms.  Another very large brood surfaces every thirteen years.   While they are on the surface of the earth, as mature cicadas, they hurry about signing their very noisy songs as they attempt to attract mates.  When they have managed to secure a mate, the females lay their eggs underground, the adults die, and the cycle begins anew,

When a major brood of cicadas hatch it is quite a noisy affair, but when two major broods hatch at the same time it will be . . . well, we don't know exactly how it will be because it last happened in 1803, back when Thomas Jefferson was President, and it is only every 221 years that the 17-year-cicadas and the 13-year-cicadas hatch at the same time - and that will be this year - starting in late April.  

The two groups don't inhabit exactly the same space, but there will be a small strip of land in Illinois where both groups are expected to emerge at the same time.  Also, much of their breeding areas are in close proximity to one another.

Scientists and "cicada tourists" are all anxious to see what happens.  Will the two groups get along, will they antagonize or attack one another, or will they get adventurous and do some cross-mating?  Spring and early summer across the United States this year will be very interesting - at least to entomologists and students of nature - and it will certainly be noisy!

But this spring and summer were going to be noisy anyway.