The Cicada

Et cantu querula rumpent arbusta cicada. Nil carborundum ilijitemi.

The searing heat is upon us. As soon as the sun rises then the Cicada start their screeching. My granddaughter came down from upstairs saying what ever is that screaming outside? I listened and realized that it was the Cicadas in the trees. I said that's Cicadas. Oh, she said what are they? So I told her that they were insects..Where do they come from and what do they do? Well, I replied, they are grubs in the ground for years then one day they come out of the ground, and climb a tree. That screaming noise is them calling to each other. Then they lay their eggs and die. She thought for a while, then said, is that all they do, be born, climb trees, scream at each other, then die! Why don't they get a life?

One man's headache is another man's music. But to others, their sonic singing was so highly regarded that the symbol of the Cicada can be seen in their art, sitting on the strings of the Cythera. High born Athenians wore golden ornaments in their hair and the coins of the Lorians carried its image. I would imagine that it was seen as some kind of sex symbol. With all that singing for a mate. They were even eaten, satisfying mind, body and spirit.

It's the males who are calling. The apparatus for producing such noise is a complicated arrangement of taught parchments, membranes, flaps, resonating cavities, projections, abdominal contractions and explanations, producing a seemingly endless rising and falling cantilena. This is found nowhere else in the kingdom of animals.

One can creep up on these noisy songsters but with three eyes they can spot us and quickly move to the other side of the branch to hide. They look a bit like huge horse flies and will readily take to the wing, often blundering through open car windows. They feed on the sap of the trees they occupy. After the wedding and honeymoon they reproduce themselves. The female cuts deeply into the host tree and lays five to eight eggs at a time, then the newly weds all fall down and die.

But the little ones are safe inside the branches where they hatch, descend below, burrow into the soil and feed on the sap of the roots and await another searing summer day to rise up again.