Party of the Century

We are 27 days into a raucous sex-drenched non-stop party in my neighborhood, the likes of which we are unlikely to see again for 17 years. Unfortunately, the invitees to this party are exclusively 17-year cicadas, although the rest of us have had, unavoidably, a front row seat for much of the action.

The whole thing has been a kid's dream. To say they have taken over the neighborhood would be an understatement. They first began emerging silently from the ground over 3 weeks ago, in some yards every few inches. In the space of a few days, the neighborhood filed up with slow-moving, freaky looking bugs that don't protest too much when caught and who don't sting. They have bulging red eyes and sticky little feet that allow them to cling to anything, including upside down on your hand. After emerging wingless, they began their march towards anything tall. Most gravitated to taller, older trees, but others were less picky, climbing up most anything; houses, car tires, swingsets, anything that would get them off the ground. They attached themselves pretty much at little kid eye-level and then proceeded to literally crawl out of their skins, coming out white until they darkened to black after a day or so. Hundreds of vacated shells surround the most popular trees (see picture above - all the brown things on the ground are vacated skins). Finally, their wings grew in, and the din began, as the males began trying to attract females by beating their wings against a hollow abdomen or some such mechanism. Walking to the train each morning, the hum has already begun. By midday, it builds to an incessant, deafening, pulsating roar. I think people on the block are starting to go a little batty from the constant throbbing noise, especially the stay-at-home moms. And they are EVERYWHERE. You can't avoid stepping on them since they cover the sidewalk so thickly. I had one flutter out of my shirt as I hung it in the closet after work. They are inside the car and clinging to the car tires. On the side of the house. On the deck and swingset, even showing up, somehow, in the port-o-crib inside. Because they are pretty vague flyers, they have a tendency to wack into the side of your head or otherwise land on you when you venture outside. When the mating frenzy was at its peak, we even had a mating couple crash-land at our feet while eating dinner on the deck. Owen proclaimed them to be fighting. Deanna told him they were "making eggs" and we left it at that. Between the noise and the sheer numbers, it is like living inside a science fiction movie. Large flocks of seagulls have flown the 8-miles inland from Lake Michigan to gorge on these tasty insect snacks, adding to the weirdness of the scene.

The gulls are on to something, because cicadas are supposedly, for the non-squeamish or those too young to know better, edible. The twins like to chase after them, most likely with the intent of popping them into their mouths. Although cicadas don't seem particularly bright, they are bright enough to evade a lumbering one year old coming at them, so I don't think any have actually been captured and/or eaten (at least as far as we know!). Owen did approach me with two dead cicadas yesterday and asked if we had any chocolate sauce. Not sure how serious he was.

As the party grinds towards its fifth week, it is finally starting to die down, literally, as the cicadas life-cycle comes to an end. As weird as the whole thing has been, it has also been miraculous (how do they all know to pop out of the ground the same year??) and a pretty cool way to kick off summer. Definitely a party to remember.

The excellent close up of the cicada near our house in the picture above was taken by my brother-in-law. Other selections from his gallery can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanvisuals/.