So the Cicada said…
Layla the husky headed out last night on her midnight patrol ‘n pee, the last of the evening, stuck her head in the azaleas and came out munching with that sideways chewing that dogs use to put their back molars to work. Which is but a forewarning of what’s coming. Layla is a fussy eater, but she savors a crispy snack when she hears one.
After living through this swarm seventeen years earlier with Maddie, our previous husky, I am writing to offer advice for those living in the mid-Atlantic: Brood X is climbing out once again. If you think the jets flying out of Reagan National are loud overhead, well, wait for it. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy done insect choral style from baritone to soprano night after night for miles around is an amazing spectacle. If you have trees, you’ll have cicadas.
God intends us to honor these creatures as lovers of the first degree. Shakespeare’s pun, ‘to die’ is something they take seriously —I’d say ‘literally,’ but cicadas can’t read.
And if cicadas are about the ugliest insects around, they are fervent in pursuit of, er, well, er, one great orgasm. You’d have red bug eyes too if you stayed up all night for a week crying for some babe to let you give her your all. Flopping over dead from exhaustion is a final tribute.
When your dog’s poop turns a dark shade of green with bits of emerald wing, you’ll know the reason.
And the rats. Did you know that every seventeen years the rat population explodes as well? Good eatin’ all round. Fish, birds, everyone gets in on the act.
We’re told they’ll be emerging by the billions. Estimated at 1.5 million per acre in areas where the land hasn’t been excavated. That works out to 375,000 of these bugs in our yard alone, lurking under the turf, waiting. Seventeen years waiting to fornicate — and way louder than a preacher rousing the congregation. So you are forewarned.
And they are ridiculously bad flyers, probably because they just got their wings, like Zuzu Bailey says in that movie; though no bells ringing, only a very loud bug chorus. To watch them fly, they look more like overloaded painters’ trucks — the ones with bald tires on the Beltway wobbling side to side ready to dump a ladder on the road right in front of you.
These are not your mother’s cicadas — well, perhaps their descendants — but so you know, don’t be surprised at their size. About the same size as a Florida palmetto bug, if you know the euphemism I’m referring to, “wink, wink, say na more.”
After a while, Maddie — who’s now in husky heaven with her brother, Mojo— didn’t even bother to work to eat them; she’d simply lounge on the lawn and wait. Since they could barely get off the ground, they’d climb a tree and attempt a long glide across the lawn. She caught any number of them by snatching them flying by. Her kind of sushi — she loved them fresh. I think she put on weight that summer. Mojo was not as much a fan.
And the fish will love them, too — oh, I mentioned that.
I have a certain affection for Brood X. Most summers you hear a handful from lesser broods, but the Brood X guys spend seventeen years underground, quietly munching on roots, building stamina for that one big push, so to speak, then erupt in a week or so of full throated singing and furious sex. We’re talking the ‘I only have this one go-round and mean to make it count’ kind. You have to be charmed by the passion. I’ve never seen lotharios in pickup bars work so fervently.
For this year’s cycle, there is even a website, CicadaMania selling mugs and T-shirts. When it’s over, what will the webmaster do for the next seventeen years?
I saved one decently intact shell from the last great emergence in 2004. Placed it in the medicine cabinet up until we tore out that bathroom in a renovation project. Occasionally I’d study it while shaving, thinking how strange to live underground for seventeen years as a nymph, emerge into the sun, shed your skin, and go looking for love. Maybe I’ll snag another shell this go-round.
I hope Layla doesn’t gain too much weight.
