In Missouri: the Cicada's Song

By Sue Hubbell

To hear people talk down at the cafe, you'd think we were being invaded by hostile aliens from a grade-B science fiction movie. A new brood of 13-year cicadas, estimated to be in the millions, has crawled up out of the ground in a big part of the country's midsection. Its members are trying their wings, singing like crazy and mating in a very public way. In a few weeks they will die off and be gone, but for now they are quite the topic of conversation.

There are annual cicadas all over the U.S. Most people call them dog-day cicadas, and their buzzy song is a part of the sound of late summer, like those of katydids and whippoorwills. But in the Eastern half of the country at long intervals early in the summer, periodic cicadas emerge from the ground where, in their juvenile form, they have been feeding on the sap of tree roots. All cicadas in a particular region are presumed to be of the same origin and appear in synchrony in early summer. In Northern states and along the eastern edge of the Great Plains, they appear every 17 years; in the Southern and Mississippi valley states, it takes 13 years for a new brood to emerge.

These periodic cicadas are not so big as the common annual variety, but they are large as bugs go, broad, sturdy and nearly two inches in length. They have black bodies and huge showy wings that look like they are made of isinglass, delicately veined and edged in brilliant orange. Their legs are orange too. Their big, bulging eyes are deep red, and each is centered with a meaningful- looking dark brown dot. They are beautiful, spectacular bugs, and their appearance is exuberant and exciting, a marvel, a celebration. Their presence is a reminder that there are other life cycles than ours, other rhythms of living than the human one.

When they first come out of the ground, they are still wearing their golden- brown nymphal skins, which they shed. After crawling out of that wingless skin, which splits neatly down the back, the handsome adults sit quietly and visibly on tree trunks tentatively trying their new wings. Then they set out for a few weeks of courtship and mating. During those weeks the males sing, the paired couple reproduce and then they die.

Scientists speculate that the periodic cicada's infrequent but abundant above-ground appearance is a survival strategy. Predators cannot thrive on a dinner that shows up so seldom, and the cicadas' sheer numbers guarantee that even though individuals are easy to catch, many will survive.

Some also claim that the cicada's peculiar, burning, raspy song, produced by a pair of ribbed membranes at the sides of the male's abdomen, is irritating to predators. That seems fanciful, but perhaps it is true because people are uncommonly cross about cicadas and complain that their song is nerve-racking. In Missouri, these days, it is constant and pervasive. The cicadas have three things to say. One is a steady, insistent, buzzy trill: zs-zs-zs-zs-zs. It is a background to a more varied kee-o-keeeee-o-kee-o that punctuates the steady drone. When picked up and held, the cicadas emit a sharp bzz-t-byzzt that sounds troubled and probably is.

Once the insects have paired, they mate openly on tree trunks and branches, without regard for the fact that they can easily be picked off and eaten by predators or squashed and dusted with poison by humans. But most survive, and the female is able to lay upwards of 500 eggs in slits that she makes in twigs. The lives of the adults are soon over, and they die. But in eight weeks the cicada nymphs hatch and burrow down into the ground to reach the tree roots, on which they will feed and grow slowly for the next 13 years. The periodic cicadas do not kill trees in their feeding, and at no point in their lives do they hurt garden vegetables or flowering plants, although their egg laying can damage young trees. They are bugs of such innocence and beauty and specialness that their appearance, one would think, would be regarded with interest and appreciation, like that of a comet or a rare bird. But it is not.

Down at the post office the talk among people waiting for their mail is of how bad the cicadas are and how much worse they will get as they become more numerous. Over at the cafe the morning crowd is discussing how to do them in. Squashing them between thumb and forefinger was held to be effective but unaesthetic. A stick was recommended for bashing them. Since the adult cicadas do not chew leaves, only contact poisons will kill them, and the effectiveness of various kinds was being hotly debated. Some of the official types have been recommending dusting them with serious insecticides, but one of the coffee drinkers remembered the local state forester had said that that could cause increased levels of pesticide in the groundwater supply. The coffee cups were drained without reaching an agreement on methods, but the general opinion was that these bugs are annoying, lascivious, untidy, unruly -- in short, a nuisance.

Back in my woods where I am cutting the winter's firewood, the cicada's song fills my head, seems to reverberate inside it. Cicadas, the sun catching their wings and reflecting rainbows, line every tree trunk, every branch. One lights on my shoulder. His broad face with its big red eyes is inches from mine.

Kee-o-keeeee-o-kee-o, he says zestfully right into my ear. He sounds pleased with himself; I know I am mightily pleased with him.