Cicadas Everywhere

There has been an invasion. A huge invasion. It started innocently enough with just some weird looking little creatures making some weird noise. Just a regular bug. Then, suddenly, they were everywhere. Thousands of them. They are still here now and have been for several weeks – cicadas.

Trees are full of them. Squirrels are feasting on all the cicadas; they literally have to push them out of the way when they climb up and down the trunks of the trees.

Ever since the invasion started I have lost count of how many times I have heard people scream “GO AWAY, CICADA!” when somebody opened the door just to find that a cicada was trying to gain entry into their house. Some people have become practical and have started eating the insects; that is what friends have told me at least. I have also seen it on social media but have concluded that I would rather miss out on this particular dish. 

The sound these little creatures make has been so loud at times that I have had to cut telephone calls short because I could not hear the person on the other end anymore. Yes, it was that loud. At least they do quieten down at night, which gives everybody a break from their intense sound that can continously be heard during the day.

Not only are these insects loud, they are pretty disgusting. They are not at all dangerous for humans. They are just ugly, and I don't appreciate them mistaking me for a tree and trying to land on me. They seem to have a strange fascination with my backpack; whenever I carry it with me outside in cicada-land, I can be sure that at least one cicada lands on it and I have to gently (or not so gently) push it away upon entering a building because I do not want to take a cicada inside, of course.

I have been told that these cicadas are part of the “17-year periodical cicadas” meaning that every 17 years the cicadas come out, mate, lay eggs and then die. After the offspring is born, they disappear into the ground and don't reemerge until 17 years later. How they know that the years are up, nobody knows. There are other cicadas that come out every 13 or 7 years but from what I have heard these are not as numerous and not nearly as loud. Lucky me that I get to experience the most intense invasion of these little annoying animals.