Cicada Thoughts

The cicadas were omnipresent. Rumored to have arrived in a mega-brood of four billion this year, they were everywhere and nowhere. They were an ideal shade of brown that blended with every tree, every mulch pile, our coffee table, my hair. At times, we could walk down the street and pay no attention to them, but at closer inspection at the base of any trunk we could see that it was carpeted with their shells so thickly that we could no longer see the dirt underneath. In the mornings, when it was cool, everything was silent except for a few stragglers who shrilled their last breaths. By sunny mid-day the shrieking chatter would become so loud that it hurt the inside of our heads and the noise would cause us to break out in goose skin, a cold sweat from the aural pain. Little children walked around with their hands over the ears, with only a slight understanding that this summer was unusual. Who were these guests?

The noise was incredibly distinct and ominous. In our immediate vicinity, their cries were high-pitched and penetrating, turning off and on with every gust of wind in great, tumultuous cacophony. The sound would swell and envelop us, then the trees, then the air, and take up an incredible amount of space, destroying any sliver of suburban quiet. The noise had two layers, however. Underneath the high-pitched surface was a deep echo. It was the far away sound of a billion cicadas singing in a single voice, resonating at some secret, lower octave. It was muted only by distance. It was as though someone had brought a conch shell against both my ears and I could hear my blood rushing through my body. Like I could hear my pulse at all times. It is a sound I have never heard before and yet have heard always. It was completely inescapable. I could hear it on the interstate and it was louder than a thousand cars.

The bodies were something else. Hard-packed clay was dotted with holes a little smaller than a dime where the larva emerged in an alien-like invasion. The shells were crispy and light, falling off tree trunks with every rain. The cicada breaks free of its tight keratin body and emerges wet, white, wrinkled and bloodless. Over the course of an hour it darkens, its eyes turn a bright, devilish red, and its wings expand with pneumatic intensity, after which, the cicada is slow and completely unarmed. It cannot bite or spit, it cannot fly very fast. Its only defense against anything at all is a single, vibrating screech.

They would land lazily on our clothes. We flicked them off with a finger, upon which they tumbled ingloriously to the sidewalk in chattering discontent. Stepping on them was just as easy. Their bodies were soft and popped open at a seam along their abdomen, spilling out innards like buttercream frosting. My mother and I argued, is it fat? Muscle? Every sunken corner of sidewalk accumulated the dead cicadas, having an appearance of a pile of dead leaves or dried mud. Other carcasses were disassembled slowly by carpenter ants. First they hoisted the six legs away, then plucked off the wings. A single ant would drag the translucent appendage to the mound, as though carrying a flagstaff. Or a shark fin, swimming through the grass. They executed this in surgical preciseness until only the body was left for the flies.

Before their deaths, some cicadas were lucky to have had sex. Mating partners connected ass-to-ass, forming a symmetrical structure that was really quite elegant. The structure did not move, or if it did, very slowly (think tandem bike). While inspecting one of these pairs, a little white girl with a little white dog came up behind us. The dog was incredibly eager to lick our ankles and smell our feet, which had just finished stepping on hundreds of dead bodies. The dog was named Coco. “Does your dog like the cicadas?” I asked. “Yes! She does!” the girl replied, and after a moment, added, “She loves to eat them.” They did look delicious. Their chubby bodies practically flew into our mouths, teasing us to have a bite. We laughed, the dog ran forward, and the cicadas continued to scream.

AS 06/22/24