We've been talking about it since 2004, and here they are again - the once-every-17 year hatch of periodic cicadas is busting out of their long subterranean dormancy all across the eastern United States. And they are gonna be LOUD. And ugly.
In years past (2004, 1987 and 1970, in my memory) they were here by early May, but just like you and me, they didn't want to get out of bed while we enjoyed a chilly early May this year. The cicada nymphs that have been getting their nutrition from tree roots all the years are coming out of the ground, shedding their exoskeletons, and looking for mates.
First, they ought to stop off at the dry cleaners and pick up their good outfits, and maybe get some decent shoes to go a-courtin'!
Dr. Jessica Ware, an associate curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has been looking forward to this month since May, 2004, a month memorable for Massachusetts becoming the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, the Arizona Diamondbacks' Randy Johnson throwing a perfect game (2-0 vs Atlanta), the final episodes of "Friends" and "Frazier" airing on TV, the entire town of Hallam, Nebraska, being wiped out by a powerful 2.5 mile wide F4 tornado, with but one fatality, and a horse with the cool name of "Smarty Jones" winning the Kentucky Derby.
"May is going to be a loud month, for sure, for cicadas," said Ware, a bit too happily, if you ask me. "It's kind of exciting to think about Brood X emerging because the last time these individuals were above ground was in 2004. And so when you think about it - a lot's happened in the last 17 years," said Ware.
In much the same way that 17-year-old American males seek to attract mates by playing Luke Bryan too loudly, showing off giant belt buckles and turned-around ball caps, and hollering, "Duuuuuuuude! Watch this!," 17-year-old male cicadas emit a mating chirp by vibrating a plate called a tymbal located on their abdomens.
If American teenaged males had a tymbal, so would they.
"It's this kind of dance; males are showing that they can call as loud and as long as possible, which means they're probably a good mate. Females are listening. Are they calling loud? Are they calling long?... it's kind of a complicated acoustic dance that they're doing," Ware says.
It must be similar to dancing the "Renegade" on TikTok, but cicadas are not online.
Ware wants us to remember that cicadas are harmless, and they become part of the food chain, supplying snackage for food for birds, animals and other insects.
This all takes place in the mid- Eastern United States, from down in East Tennessee to southern parts of New York.
Sorry, Kansas, Utah, California, Texas. You can join me in feeling sorry for the cicadas that can't get dates and then wind up as a squirrel's lunch.
2 comments:
Is “snackage” really a word - lol?
If the NFL can say "yardage," I say any word can have "-age" added to it. It makes for interesting wordage.
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