What's Bugging You?  Cicadas!

By Eileen Novak

If you have been reading the news, you might be somewhat alarmed about the soon-to-be-deafening emergence of the Thirteen-year cicadas.  The last time they erupted and serenaded the state was in 2011.  I can well remember hearing them.  I had just retired from civil service and we had decided to build a house here in North Carolina.  We brought our camper down to start soaking in the local atmosphere but found that we couldn’t hear ourselves think.

Now, I’m not unfamiliar with noise: I spent 13 years in Hampton, Virginia, between Langley Air Force Base and Norfolk Naval Base and am well acquainted with loud noises.  Jets, rocket testing at NASA Langley, etc.  But rocket testing lasted only about a minute and jets fly…. They fly away.  And we would always comment that jet noise was the sound of freedom.  That noise is not constant.  Cicadas fly, too, but they just change trees.  They are still definitely within earshot, and CONSTANT.  No freedom from that sound! 

And it’s not just the noise.

You might not have realized that the droning noise they make is caused by them rubbing their wings or legs together.  That rubbing causes noise and friction.  That friction, when they rub body parts together, makes heat as well as noise.  So the next time you go out and are picking fruit or beans or weeds and hear those cicadas start their mournful drone, you will know for certain that is why it feels 10 degrees hotter!  Those darned cicadas are contributing to Global Warming as they serenade us.

Periodical cicada that has just molted. This is a 17 year cicada from Brood IX back in 2020.

This photo was taken on April 27, 2020. Debbie Roos All Rights Reserved

The thing is, the singing is a mating call, sort of a loud Lonely Bug Hearts Club and when the bug hearts are no longer lonely, the females then lay their eggs in tree branches to continue the serenade in another 13 years.  It doesn’t hurt large trees but young plantings might suffer damage.  I find I am always curious as to what is doing things to my vegetation and if you are also wondering, this is a shot of damage done by a mama cicada.

Damage caused by female periodical cicada laying eggs in a young possumhaw (Ilex decidua) tree stem.

This was the 13-year Brood XIX cicadas back in 2011.

Photo by Debbie Roos All Rights Reserved

So the only conclusion I can come to is if you don’t want to listen to the incessant droning, get an audio book, put earphones in your ears and listen instead to your favorite author.  And put your chilled water in a small cooler to combat all that global warming.

Eileen Novak    All Rights Reserved  Eileennovak915@gmail.com