Keeping a constant vigil

by David Grand
June 10, 2004

Since mid-May, I've been on alert 24-hours-a-day waiting for those swarms of cicadas to descend on my neck of the woods as they have elsewhere in Maryland and in other Eastern Seaboard states. But so far, I haven't seen or heard any of those red-eyed, green-winged insects, the males of which emit a shrill, ear-piercing song; and which led an ancient Greek to say, "Happy are the cicadas' lives for they have voiceless wives."

And their noisemaking is apparently loud enough to wake up the dead, with a decimal level of 105, which is higher than the 80 decimal level of city traffic and only 15 levels under a Fourth of July firecracker. That sure puts the crickets to shame, what with their chirping noise, as well as the woodpeckers with their rat-a-tat-tats.

Now, I know there isn't a damn thing I can do to prevent them from zeroing in on my property, anymore than I can keep the squirrels away from my bird feeders without shooting 'em. So all I can do is hope that they'll bypass my home, or that seagulls would come to our rescue and devour 'em much as they did in saving the crops of the Mormon settlers from grasshoppers in 1848. (It's Utah's State bird, with a bronze monument of two gulls erected in Salt Lake, City "in grateful remembrance" of the occasion.)

In my limited research on that pesky insect, I found that there are over 1500 species, more than 200 of which are in the United States; that the cicadas that have invaded us emerge after 17 years of dormancy underground for just five weeks of lively activity in the sunlight and then die; that they are incorrectly called locusts, when the grasshopper is the only true locust; and that they are greenish with red and black markings, are 2 to 5 inches long, with four wings, a wide head, a three-jointed beak, an abdomen of six segments and five eyes (two prominent compound eyes and three simple ones that act as light detectors to guide them.) I doubt if even Hollywood could come with a more hideous looking monster in their horror films.

And wouldn't you know it, even though they can't sing a note it's the females that do immense damage to forests and orchards by cutting row upon row of egg pockets in twigs, causing them and the leaves to fall off, and with each one laying 200 to 600 eggs to carry on their destructive work.

For those of you with entomophobia (a fear of insects), therapists can help you deal with cicadas. But you can also help yourself by staying away from blossoming bushes and open garbage cans; and when you see 'em crawling on the ground, letting someone else squish 'em or let the dog gulp 'em down.

I don't want to leave you with the impression that I abhor all insects. For I greatly admire the industrious ants, who are so regimented and who and can carry hundreds of times their weight; the butterfly who is like a fluttering flower; the fireflies whose flashing lights are synchronized, with hundreds of them flashing off and on in unison, signaling a request for the meeting of the sexes; the honey bee, who travels an estimated 43,000 miles to gather one pound of honey, and who teaches us two valuable lessons: not to be idle and not to get stung.

Oh my goodness, what's that loud noise I just heard over my house? Whew! It turned out to be only a low flying plane from the airport that's only a little over a mile away. But I'll still remain vigilant, particularly at night, lest they launch an attack when me and my dogs are sleeping, though I'm sure they'd be the first ones to detect their arrival and awaken me. But hopefully my snoring like a diesel truck would scare 'em off.