They're baaack! Cicadas return after 17 years

Marni Pyke and Mick Zawislak | Daily Herald
Monday, May 21, 2007

This is a story about sex and death.

It's the tale of a 17-year-old who realizes the time has come to leave home.
On the journey, the youth spreads his wings and finds his voice. He falls for a soul mate. Tragically, two weeks later - he dies.
Hey, life's tough when you're a periodical cicada.
And while their stay is brief, this year's crop of periodical cicadas, known as Brood XIII, will make an impression, perhaps as soon as tomorrow, on thousands of suburbanites:
The dog owner, dragging his pet away from a meal of deceased cicadas.
The bride, trying to make her vows heard above a chorus of insects, each as loud as a blender.
The golfer, wondering if cicadas buzzing around his club provide grounds to ask for a mulligan.
Irritations, yes. But put it in relative terms and enjoy.
For it's not every summer the periodical cicada sings.

Magic cicada

The Latin name for the species of cicada descending on Illinois this year is magicicada.
Some ancient cultures saw the insects as symbols of resurrection and immortality or as divine intercessors. They've been linked to the plague of locusts in the Bible and heralded as tokens of good luck.
Certainly, they're survivors.
Unlike annual cicadas, periodical cicadas emerge from the ground where they've been holed up for 17 years en masse.
After such a boring existence, the males are ready for a little action. Shortly after shedding their exoskeletons, the six-legged Romeos start wailing away, producing a shrill sound using sound-producing body parts called tymbals.
Females can't resist the booty call. Mating occurs abdomen-to-abdomen, after which the insects go their separate ways. The males die off while the females lay eggs, then call it a day, too.
Six weeks later, the new cicadas hatch and tunnel into the earth, starting the cycle again.
"The relationship between sex and death is pretty interesting because they emerge after years of dormancy, mate in this great orgiastic frenzy, and then they die off," said Jeremy Biles, author of "The Cicada Complex," which appeared in Sightings, a University of Chicago Divinity School publication.
"It's a symbol of fecundity, of abundance and of resurrection."
Large and loud, cicadas are monsters of the insect world.
"They're grotesque, but they're also beautiful," said Biles, who also edits Sightings.

Brooding presence

Some are picking up on the "bugs are beautiful" theme.
"We're trying to educate folks who feel it's a gross thing on the life cycle of the cicada and reason they come out in such numbers," said Tom Velat, entomologist at the DuPage County Forest Preserve District, where naturalists are training a civilian cicada corps to document the emergence.
"It only comes around every 17 years, so it's something not to despise but to enjoy," he said.
DuPage isn't the only region waving the cicada pompoms.
The Lake County Forest Preserve District is spending $40,000 on cicada exhibits and programs, a traveling museum and a part-time educator.
The publicity blitz is working.
"There are people coming from Connecticut and New Jersey and California, (and) we have a film crew from Tokyo," environmental education manager Nan Buckardt said.
Cicada expert Gene Kritsky, an Ohio biology professor, projects Brood XIII will begin to emerge Tuesday.
"The formula is based on average April temperatures, so that hasn't changed," he said.
Buckardt is monitoring the soil temperatures at Ryerson Woods Welcome Center near Deerfield waiting for the magic mid-60s-degree reading. Until then, cicadas remain buried.
"I don't think people grasp how amazing this is," Buckardt said. "Where are you going to go where you could see within a day's drive, a billion animals of the same species?"

A movable feast

Back in 1990, the teenage Velat and his brother woke up to find cicadas all over their Villa Park neighborhood.
It was a taste of nature they never forgot.
"We made stir-fry out of them," Velat recalls. "They tasted like crunchy lima beans.
"People don't need to experience the emergence this way," he added.
The Rev. Kirk Moore has not only posted a cicada recipe on his Web site, revkirk.blogspot.com, but he intends to cook a gourmet meal.
The Downers Grove native grew up in a neighborhood forested with the old trees the bugs prefer and fondly remembers two cicada visitations.
Moore now lives in a newer part of Warrenville where the insects may be scarce. Trying to get into the spirit of the latest emergence, he researched recipes and picked one that calls for marinating the bugs in Worcestershire sauce, dousing them with flour and sautéing until golden.
It will be a solitary meal as his wife has vetoed even using her dishes.
"I promised to go to the resale shop and buy some cheap pots and pans to cook with," Moore said.
Another prospective bug gourmet is McHenry County Board member Barbara Wheeler, who hosts Cicada Fest II next month.
As a college student, she organized Cicada Fest I in July 1990 - but the insects were party poopers.
"We didn't realize they had such a short life span," Wheeler said.
This time around, the event is set for June 8, prime cicada time. A cook-off is included.
"People ask, 'Are we really supposed to bring dishes with cicadas in them?' I say, 'Of course,'" Wheeler said.
Biologist Kritsky recommends eating newly emerged cicadas. Once the shell hardens, the pieces of exoskeleton can lodge in teeth.
"That's why we pick 'em when they're white," Kritsky said. He compares the taste to cold asparagus but isn't a connoisseur.
"I don't make a habit of it because I like the animal too much," Kritsky said.
Humans won't be the only ones munching on cicadas this month. Brookfield Zoo, which had a bonanza year with cicadas in 1990, plans to freeze some of the insects to make "cicada-sicles" for birds and monkeys.
Cicadas have other uses, too.
"Some people are taking the shells and doing craft projects with them," said Doris Taylor, Morton Arboretum plant clinic manager. "They're definitely compost-able, so people can put them in their mulch. They're organic matter. It may stink for a while, but eventually they'll break down."

Not bugged at all

The realization this was the summer of the cicada hit Ravinia early. The Highland Park outdoor music festival rescheduled some Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances that might conflict with the a-cappella cicada concert.
But news of the emergence came as a surprise for bride-to-be Jenny Knapp. She picked her June 15 wedding date and booked the Danada House mansion in Wheaton last summer before realizing it could be Grand Central Station onboard the Cicada Express.
Knapp is taking it in stride.
"It was one of those things where it was just 'OK, what are you going to do?'" she said. "We do have a PA system set up in case of the noise."
In fact, the couple hopes to work the cicadas into their program so "people won't feel sorry for us," Knapp said, adding jokingly, "We could say, 'We planned this 17 years ago.'"
Still, Danada's staff promises to use leaf blowers to remove any cicada wedding crashers before the outdoor ceremony.
"Imagine walking down the aisle and hearing a crunching," Knapp said.
The Schaumburg Flyers baseball team also is eager to be at one with nature, offering a prize of four tickets to the fan bearing the biggest cicada.
"We don't have to give out artificial noisemakers - the cicadas will do the job," Assistant General Manager Scott Boor said.
This also is the season for outdoor graduations. Naperville North High School is ready to roll out a sound system that will blow away any cicada competitors during its Wednesday ceremony.
"We're going to go for it," activities dean Jennifer Baumgartner said, "and hope they are calm."

Now, the human side

Memories of the last cicada invasion are still fresh for the Nosaliks. The Bensenville family had a string of problems with above-ground pools and thought they'd bought another lemon in late spring of 1990.
"The water level would drop a couple of inches every week," recalled Kim Nosalik, then a teenager. Her father was convinced it was a prank until he looked closely at the liner.
"There were holes everywhere. It was like someone had shot a BB gun through a target. We realized it was the cicadas," she said.
Bensenville was hit hard that year.
"My dog just chomped on them like nobody's business," Nosalik recalled. "He ate 'em by the pound. He'd have wings sticking out of his mouth. Sometimes they were buzzing in his mouth."
Des Plaines resident Jim Gillespie remembers catching cicadas as a kid with his sisters who'd scan the intricate lines of the insect's wings, looking for letters of the alphabet.
"The initials would tell who their next boyfriend was or who they would marry," he said.
Gillespie, who heads up The Right Tract Ministries, is planning to tape the sound of the cicadas for background music in a DVD he's making with a Gospel message.
"I could sit and listen to them all day," he said.
Special education teacher Ruth Najacht took her students on a nature walk in Elmhurst during the 1990 emergence.
"They were all over. I've never seen so many in my life," she reminisced.
"The kids were ooh-ing and ahh-ing and wanted to know if they could touch them."
Najacht, now retired and living in Wheaton, will be 96 when the next cicada visitation happens. And given the insect's mythical powers for granting immortality, it's a good bet she'll be watching in 2024.
"I may make it," she said. "You never know."

• Daily Herald staff writer Melissa Jenco contributed to this report.

originally published at www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=314763