Ever wonder what it would be like to be a cicada?
Okay. Maybe it’s just me.
But you should consider this type of wondering because cicadas are fairly neat.
Adult cicadas are large, fly-looking insects with large heads (which, some say, explains my affinity for them), cellophane-like wings, and a pointy straw for a mouth.
Juvenile cicadas (“nymphs”) are mole-like bugs that climb out of mud burrows in late spring, claw their way up the sides of trees or other yard wood things, and then, like the incredible Hulk off his meds, split their shells to allow emergence of their winged, adult glory.
And then, after this wondrous physical and spiritual display of bug transcendence, they spend every sunlit hour of the ensuing summer months asking us to keep quiet with their “Shhhhh!” exclamations like librarians on crack.
Of course, we shouldn’t be offended by these admonitions for quietude because cicadas’ sounds are not meant for us. Without cell phones or Internet dating services available to them, male cicadas make this sound to call their mates. Scientists have identified over 1500 different cicada mating calls, and this likely explains where the idea for musical ring tones came from. Further, according to scientists, some males can adapt their calls for different types of females and for different times of day. This explains where the idea for many rap tunes comes from. None of this, however, explains, why some lonely scientists were studying cicada mating calls.
Like most insects, cicadas live a much-maligned life. In ancient times, the Greeks used to eat them (they’re high in protein and roughage), the Egyptians used to wear them (they make an attractive but tickly cartouche), and the Chinese used to cage them as pets (they don’t bark all night). Arguably the worst cicada maligning, however, derives from colonial America where early British settlers equated massive summer emergences of cicadas with Biblical plagues. Since then, Americans have mistakenly called cicadas “locusts,” which is a particularly offensive epithet to cicadas themselves. Locusts are actually grasshoppers-the “pigs” of the insect world-with some species capable of forming million-man swarms and devastating entire crops. Cicadas, on the other hand have adapted a much more “green” lifestyle. With their straw-like mouths, adult and nymph cicadas draw only small volumes of fluids from plant roots or twigs and do not chew leaves or damage flowers. When adult female cicadas split small tree branches to deposit their eggs, the splitting process serves as natural pruning and encourages new growth. And when cicadas die by the billions each year, degradation of the protein and DNA from their big bodies and wings returns a substantial mass of useable nitrogen to forest soils. Al Gore should be pleased.
There are some cicadas that pop up every year-sorta like the flu-and some that pop up every decade or so-sorta like a President Bush. These latter types are called periodical cicadas, and the most common of the periodicals (interestingly, another library allusion) is the 17-year cicada. Nymphs of these cicadas have been nipping plant juice from succulent rootlets for seventeen years before they split open and become adult.
Imagine a newborn cicada nymph just emerged from its eggshell high up in the split-branch of that pine tree in your front yard just outside your living room window. What would it have experienced as a baby in 1990 while glimpsing your television set during its painstaking crawl down the pine bark to its new muddy home: Nelson Mandela is free but Manuel Noriega is no longer, Margaret Thatcher resigns and Lech Walesa reigns, Communist Parties in both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union relinquish power, Iraq invades Kuwait, Germany is one country again, “The Simpsons” and “Seinfeld” debut, Oliver North is cleared but Milli and Vanilli are convicted, the Hubble Telescope is launched, and – most importantly – there are more cicadas in North America than dollars of the Federal debt.
Perhaps the 1990 event most disappointing to the 2007 adult cicadas is the film industry’s decision to change the “X”-rating to “NC-17.” Without this traditionally stigmatic rating, cicadas burrowing into the ground in 1990 will have missed seventeen years of movies that they could have fooled their parents into allowing them to see. There is no solace in 2007 for cicada adults, particularly in North America, because tiny, claw-held DVDs and players are only available in Japan. What’s worse, is that adult cicadas live for only up to six weeks, which means that, if we subtract a couple of hours per day for calling and mating, and if we consider coincident populations of bird predators, cicada killer wasps, and the dreaded cicada abdomen fungus, it’s likely that a 2007 cicada will only get to watch one half of the director’s cut of “American Psycho”.
The Cicada Class of 2007 will be arriving soon. It may have escaped your notice that this batch of 17-year cicadas will be about the same age as you when you first arrived at college. Essentially, these are your brethren, your colleagues, your age-groupies. Like them, you should get out of the burrow, shake off that mud, unfurl those wings and know your seventeen years. And when you find yourself quiet in the library, hide those roots, because there’s no eating in the library.