By the middle of May, there were cicada shells thick on many lawns in the neighborhood. I saw a little boy a block from here collecting the shells as his mother watched. I saw one fly by that weekend, and my wife saw one walk across the garage stoop. During the third week of May we saw few flying, but many squished on the pavement. The neighborhood dogs had mixed reactions. One I know of--with suspect tastes to begin with--ate every cicada he could reach. Others would sample them, others still regarded cicadas as something to look at but not to eat.
When we first started to hear them, they sounded like the sort of mechanical noise one hears through a large building's air-conditioning system, suggesting something poorly lubricated in the machinery. At their peak, about the beginning of June, the cicadas made a noise like sirens half a mile away. The volume of the noise seemed to be correlated with the heat. It took a while for them to be heard in Rock Creek Park, which is usually a few degrees cooler than the surrounding areas.
A couple of Saturdays ago, a young man came down the street with a plastic bag, harvesting what cicadas he could find. I thought it odd that someone who planned to eat cicadas should be wearing latex gloves to grasp them. But I referred him to the locust trees a couple of blocks away, where my wife had said that the cicadas were thick.
Then there was a heavy rain, and after that one did not see or hear the cicadas as much.
They are not handsome or agile insects. They are slow in flight, slow afoot, and they are top-heavy--a cicada on its back is unable to right itself. But every seventeen years they make quite a show.
The birds appreciate them. A neighbor whom I saw picking serviceberries said that most years he has to race to get them before the birds, but that this year the birds were indifferent to them, apparently preferring protein to sugar. And the cicada killing wasps of course appreciated them. One of these wasps dug its hole in our front flower bed, removing a good deal of spoil:
A beautiful post for an Australian feeling homesick but without any chance of going home. The background static of cicadas is part of Christmas in Australia - or it was. Who knows if it will be still if we are ever allowed back there. (Was that boy really going to eat them? If yes, why?)
ReplyDeleteHe was definitely going to eat them, from curiosity. He had a studious look to him--I suspect that he is studying science or engineering.
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