"Colossal numbers of cicadas, unhurriedly growing underground since 1996, are about to emerge along much of the U.S. East Coast to begin passionately singing and mating as their remarkable life cycle restarts.
Was a few years ago that we had them around Chicago, but I recall the novelty wearing off quite quickly.
Where I lived, it varied widely from block to block how heavy they were, reflecting the number and age of trees. The prior batch was fun, as my kids were young. It was a neat learning/teaching experience, and they weren’t terribly heavy right around our house. But between batches we moved, and the trees in our yard and our immediate neighbors’ were cicada central. I love napping in my hammock, but it was so loud, we essentially lost use of our yard for one of the nicest months of the too-short Chicago area summer.
Here our cicadas are six years through their 17-year peregrinations underground. Sometimes I think about them, munching away down there, their only aboveground memory being the day of their hatching. All were born in 2007; all are doomed to die in 2024, unless they meet underground misfortune sooner.
But as for noise, I think our annual cicadas, every August, are worse.
