Cicada Ballet

In light of all the Weed Appreciation going on here and here and here at Suite 101, I've decided to go careening off into the Wild Things part of my topic. At the end of July here in New York State, the presence of wildness is summed up in the song of the Cicadas. (And I don't necessarily mean the singing group). It's a piercing vibrational note that laughs at us and says that it's going to be HOT today. I understand that only the males "sing" and they do that by vibrating the plates on their abdomens.

There seem to be basically two types of cicadas although there are actually quite a surprising number of species. (This amazing site even gives sound bites of their calls!) Most people know of the yearly ones ( the big green and black ones) and the "periodic" ones who emerge after lying dormant in the soil for 17 years. Though astonishingly large and noisy, they don't bite and I've carried one around on my shoulder for the better part of an afternoon. The thought of a cicada resting for 17 years below the soil's surface set off a true Edgar Alan Poe-esque mental scene of this creature attempting to emerge from beneath yet another new parking lot. Put your ear to your driveway, you may hear a frantic tapping!

Anyway, the ones who DO successfully emerge go through a transformation from brown-shelled bug-thing to incredible winged creature in about an hour and a half's time. I have had the privilege of viewing this "hatching" on a number of occasions.

The brown-shelled creature (the nymph) crawls up the trunk of a tree or a fence post just around dusk and when it finds a good spot it anchors itself with its claws by rocking back and forth ever so gently. Then it becomes very, very still. After awhile you hear rather than see the sign that the small slit on the back of the shell has split open.It's the tiniest noise like snapped fingers that didn't work. As I recall, the slit is barely a third the length of the shell. Over the next hour or so the creature within doesn't PUSH its way out of the shell but rather GROWS out of the shell. The movements are so subtle that you often have to look away to see that progress has been made. Every so often the entire thing shudders. Very slowly this impossibly huge creature just keeps expanding through the slit in the shell. There is a moment when the top of the head is free that the front facing eyeballs of the brown nymph actually ( I am NOT making this up) MOVE to the sides of the new bug's head. It's a serious eyebrow raiser!

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