Suburban America

Suburban America, by and large, seems to view the unearthing of the 17-year periodical cicada as a call to arms. Break out the pesticides, the netting, even the custom-made badminton rackets—anything to protect your young trees, your pets and yourself from this invasion of insects.

Suburban America, unlike other cultures, has yet to develop a deep appreciation for the natural and symbolic charms of this rare visitor, while unknowingly creating the very conditions that attracts them. All those young trees planted in the front yard? You might as well build a cicada motel.

There's no doubt that the billions of cicada nymphs destined to pop through the topsoil are going to affect everyday life for weeks. People who live in the 15 states where the Brood X (that's the Roman numeral for ten, not the Roman-alphabet letter X) cicadas are expected may suddenly find the outdoors not so great. They may have to dodge the airborne insects, who are to flying what elephants are to dancing. People may have to alter their plans for outdoor weddings or picnics. They may even have to monitor their pooches and cats, who could view all the cicada carcasses on the ground as a giant buffet table.

Ode to a Grecian Cicada

There are, of course, other ways to view this dawn of the living cicada. The physical act of the cicada nymph emerging from the ground (after 17 years of living a subterranean existence) has inspired a number of cultures, from the Aztecs to the Chinese, to revere the insect as a symbol of reincarnation or rebirth. Native Americans of the Oraibi tribe even believed the cicada had the power to renew life—to the point that they apparently concocted medicines from cicadas to treat war wounds.

Dr. Rory B. Egan, of the Department of Classics at the University of Manitoba, has written that the cicada also played a symbolic role in ancient Greek culture.

"Plato lived and worked in Athens, a city whose traditions gave pride of place to the cicada whose image was emblazoned on some of the city's coinage," Egan wrote in Cicadas in Ancient Greece.

"One of the major Greek historians, Thucydides, who was himself an Athenian of the generation before Plato's, tells us that in earlier times the people of Athens wore gold ornamental cicadas in their hair, and later authorities report that the cicadas were emblematic of Athenian 'autochthony,' a concept which asserted that the earliest ancestors of the Athenians were sprung from the local soil thus bequeathing to their posterity an inalienable right to the land."

The insect was more than a symbol of eternal property rights to the Greeks. The cicadas also inspired Greek poetry, including this snippet of an ode from the Anacreontea collection: "Esteemed you are by every human/As the summer's sweet-voiced prophet/The Muses love you, and Apollo too..."

Other poets would follow suit in their admiration of the cicada, even Bob Dylan who confused the insect for a locust. (For the record, locusts are a kind of grasshopper.) The Romantic poets would later hear the call of the insect world, if not exactly the cicada, and use the lowly creatures as a yardstick by which they would measure a person's humanity.

"At first reflection, it might seem a bit over the top for anyone to suggest that insects and other lower life forms are deserving of moral consideration," says HSUS historian Bernard Unti, who has recently writtenProtecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States.

"But this feeling goes back at least as far as the late 18th century, to Blake, Burns, Cowper, Pope, Shelley, Wordsworth, and other poets in the Romantic tradition," Unti adds. "They thought of nature in all its expressions as having value, and in their writings framed even the treatment of insects as a litmus of enlightened sensibility toward all life.This same ethic quickly found its way into early 19th century domestic education literature directed at children, the first 'humane education' readers."

Pity the poor American who views the cicada as merely a nuisance—or a meal.

A Bug's Life

So what makes the cicada so special? The insect's mystique, of course, is partly based on its shyness. The periodical cicadas, including Brood X, that belong to the genus Magicicada emerge every 17 years, although some emerge every 13 years, likely because they forgo the usual four-year rest period. Humans literally see these cicadas for only a few weeks out of their 13- or 17-year life cycle.

But what a few weeks they are.

Cicadas spend most of their life underground, sucking on plant roots. Their brief period above ground is reserved for a boisterous and ultimately lethal mating season.

Not long after they wiggle out from the earth and molt, many Brood X cicadas will find themselves snack food for a wide variety of predators, from squirrels to your own dog. Scientists say that's part of a grand survival plan. The sheer volume of Brood X cicadas satiates predators while still leaving millions more to mate and carry on the various species. Each female, by the way, lays between 400 and 600 eggs.

Cicadas are expected to emerge any day now, apparently when the ground reaches the right temperature. The freshly unearthed cicada will search for a vertical perch and then molt from their "youthful skin." The critter that emerges boasts bright red eyes and a buttery white color, but the latter doesn't last. Within hours, the body hardens and the color changes to a dark blue or black.

Those who don't become finger food for predators will then begin a complex mating ritual. When their bodies are ready, the males will use their "tymbals" to sing to the females, hoping to attract a mate. For some people, the sound of 10,000 male cicadas singing is tantamount to a heavy metal band, plugged into a stack of Marshall amps, cranking it up outside their front door at 5 a.m. To others, it is the sound of poetry. In China, in fact, some people apparently keep caged male cicadas at home, just to hear their song.

"If you aren't hypnotized by their bright red eyes, you might be wowed by their song," says Susan Hagood, a wildlife issues specialist for The HSUS. "The clear, melodious trill of the cardinal, the complicated and endless mimicry of the mockingbird, and the 'this-is-my-territory, not-yours' buzz of the red-winged blackbird can't hold an auditory candle to the racket made by the cicada. It has been compared to that of a lawnmower, and in decibels is only slightly lower than that of a chainsaw. I pity the light sleepers among us."

But Hagood cautions about judging the cicada's song too harshly. "It's good to know that within all that racket, there are found calls—variations on a theme—that recruit other males, attract females, and signal alarm," she says. "There are three calls used to court a particularly desirable female."

If a male's song appeals to a female cicada, she will flick her wings after his final note. This little bit of body language is all it takes for the male to approach. He will continue to sing right up to the moment of copulation. His reward for singing well, attracting a female and for reproducing is death.

The female will then search for a young, thin tree branch, in which she will cut a gash and lay her eggs. Likewise, her reward for reproducing is death. But six to eight weeks later, the eggs will hatch, the nymphs will fall to the earth, burrow themselves underground and the whole 17-year cycle will start again.

"It's all over in about a month," Hagood says. "Then, like the fictional Brigadoon, Brood X will disappear."

This entire natural production—the mass emergence of cicadas, the predation, the mating ritual, the hatchings of new nymphs—is played out right before our eyes in one grand swoop. Who would want to deprive themselves of one of nature's true spectacles?

Besides, the whole multi-week process is harmless. Cicadas do not bite, sting, transmit disease or harm crops or mature trees. At most, the tips of small tree branches may die back as a result of the incision made by the female.

As the "official cicada web site" of the College of Mount St. Joseph's notes: "Periodical cicada years are quite beneficial to the ecology of the region. Their egg-laying in trees serves as a natural 'pruning' that results in increased fruit yields in the succeeding years. Their emergence from the ground turns over large amounts of soil, and after they die, their decaying bodies contribute a massive amount of nitrogen to the soil."

Those lucky enough to live in Brood X states should enjoy this mysterious and rare phenomenon. It will be a long time before we experience it again.