A Lot to Go Through for a Song

The baton has been tapped and the symphony has officially begun.   The players are the 17-year cicadas that have emerged in full force, and though the instrumentation is a bit narrow -- something like an oboe on steroids -- it's really quite an impressive sound.  Truth be told, it's almost deafening; a wave-like undulation of varying intensities.

We had fair warning.  The media had earlier put us on alert, but I'll confess to inattention.  Then, Saturday morning, while walking outside with the dogs, Lori was troubled by the witness of an apparent beetle infestation of almost biblical proportions.  Rushing back inside, she tore into Google Images trying to identify the beetle at hand.  "They are everywhere," she noted with alarm and obvious concern for the garden.  Unsuccessful with the internet, she nudged me outside to have a look. 

Closer inspection betrayed the truth.  It was true:  they were everywhere.  Dozens on virtually every grassy stem.  According to news reports, a single tree can bear up to 40,000 -- 1.5 million per acre.  No wonder Lori's first concern was the garden.  Plague-like, all that was missing was Cecil B. Demille, Moses and the Egyptian Pharaoah.  Or maybe Alfred Hitchcock.  Anyone the least bit arachnophobic would have readily labeled it a horror movie.  But there was also fascination.  Harmless, now that we recognized what they were, we could accede to closer observation -- and fascination.

The "beetles" were in reality the exoskeletons from which the cicadas were emerging.  Pale green and almost translucent, the newly liberated insects dried themselves on the tall grass stems, defenseless, and offered themselves up to the gods of transformation.  By mid-day they had grown to a two-inch body size and found their adult colors -- orange veins and big red eyes. By mid-afternoon the music had begun -- the males trying their aural best to attract feminine attention.  They have my sympathy.  I've been to junior high dances.  It's tough enough to get yourself noticed when you are simply one among a few dozen competitors.  I can't imagine what it's like for the poor cicada.  At least we could try out an interesting dance move.  All these guys have is a single instrument identical to the ones that everybody else in the tree is playing.  Volume seems to be the only variable virtuosity.  By evening they were venturing their first flight.

They will be gone in a handful of weeks.  By then we will be deaf or inured to the sound.  Then the troops will once again march under ground until their next concert in 2031.   I doubt I will miss them -- the sound, but also the concentration.  Even knowing what they are and their harmlessness, the sheer numbers are a little creepy.

Still, it's impressive what all they go through -- 17 years underground, a climb up into the open, bursting out of a shell, drying off and stretching their wings -- just to make a little music.  So to speak.

Good luck, little guys.  I'm pulling for you.