Mrs. Towle - Newspaper Teacher
It’s been 13 years since millions of cicadas took over Middle Tennessee. I remember going to the Nashville Farmers Market downtown, hoping to grab some produce and enjoy the outdoors right at the start of the last emergence. Tiny claws clung to my clothes, the screeching sound was piercing every time I stepped outside, and the grill of my car was brown from the hoards of cicadas I’d hit on my drive in. I remember seeing people run from the indoor enclosures to their cars yelling in fear, hoping some wouldn’t land in strands of their hair or grab onto the plants they’d just purchased. That year, my beagle, Turtle, had a field day every time we let her outside. She’d run, jump, chase, and catch as many as she could before spitting their screaming bodies out of her mouth. Neighborhood kids were put outside with tennis rackets, and parents would sit on their front porches watching the massacre of cicadas. Others would walk around with plastic baggies collecting the shells of bodies the bug had shed as if it were an Easter egg hunt. On the news, reporters would advise you to cover trees and other valuable plants. They reminded residents that the cicadas wouldn’t bite or harm anyone; but their piercing noise was unbearable to most. Outside of the pandemic, that was the only other time I remember so many people staying indoors, even on days where the weather was perfect.
Starting when soil reaches 65 degrees, cicadas emerge from beneath the surface for the adult emergence stage. About ten days after they come up from the ground, the noise begins.
“They’ll come out of the ground, crawl up on an object usually where they can find a secure place to emerge from the last nymphal exoskeleton, and then they’ll begin to harden their wings and spread those wings. Those will fly to tree canopies usually,” said Jason Oliver, Research Professor of Entomology at TSU. “Males will begin to group in tree canopies and start coursing and producing, that’s going to be the loud noise that everybody is going to be hearing.” The loud noise is created by the male insects to attract the females. The females cut little slits in tree branches to lay their eggs and they can lay up to 60 eggs per notch in a branch. The eggs hatch anywhere from 15 days to a month.
They look like ants once they hatch and then they’ll start digging back into the ground to find a tree root to attach themselves to. This year, there are two different broods coming out of the ground: 13-year and 17-year. While the two broods don’t mate, their sounds will be heard across upwards of even Central Illinois and will be the loudest when the majority of the cicadas are out of the ground and in the adult stage.
If you’re concerned about how long this will last, have comfort knowing it is only temporary. “The adult stage will probably be about six weeks, but they won’t all come out on the same date, so that could extend it a little bit later into June. You know we might be, I would imagine that by July the noise level will be going down, but probably by mid-June most of them will be starting to decline” (Jason Oliver).
Right when these cicadas make their exit, the Annular Dog Day cicadas will replace them in July and August. These are the ones we hear yearly, often at dusk. The reason they aren’t as invasive, sound-wise, isn’t because they are any different, but there are simply fewer of them.
So what should you do? Well, if you own any sort of birds like chickens, guinea fowls, or quail DON’T FEED THEM. They are about to have a buffet of their own. If you have plants or trees on your property that you don’t want damaged, be sure to cover them up with netting. Pest control companies say that pesticides won’t work on these creatures, but they aren’t like termites where they will eat up your home. To battle the noise, you can turn to white sound machines for your home or office, put on noise-canceling headphones, or even use weather foam tape on doors and windows to help conceal the sound.
In the end, live and let live. They are temporary, and this too shall pass.
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