Song of the Cicada

Do you know the legend about cicadas?
They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.

~ John Berger ~

It seems the annual cicadas begin singing their song earlier in the summer each year.  When I was growing up, it was said that once you heard the cicadas, it was six weeks till first frost. While I love these expressions from the world of phenology, experience shows that it's not true.

The cicadas have been droning loudly for many weeks now, just one more piece of the puzzle that is this summer. Nearly everything occurring two to three weeks ahead of schedule makes us wonder what autumn will bring.

When everyone was here on Sunday, we talked about how loud the cicadas were.  They have a decibel rating of 90-100, with some species reaching 120 dB.  For comparison, a jackhammer is rated at 80 dB and a rock concert at 120 dB.  

Standing under one of our large oak trees when the cicadas are at full volume is deafening.  It makes you want to put your fingers in your ears.  Yet, it's a strangely comforting sound at the same time. A midwestern summer wouldn't be summer without it. Just as it wouldn't be without the sounds of the crickets and frogs in the middle of a warm dark night.

There are two kinds of cicadas here in Ohio. The annual cicada, which shows up every year and the periodical cicada, which emerges every 13 or 17 years. The last invasion of the periodical cicadas here in NW Ohio was in 2004, when Brood X made its appearance.  I'll never forget getting off the plane in Cincinnati that summer and seeing so many cicadas on the tarmac and even inside the terminal.

I grew up calling these noisy things "locusts." It wasn't until I was much older that I realized what we called locusts were really cicadas.  Locusts are a species of large brown/gray grasshoppers that can chew through plants like nobody's business. (Think: locust plagues of the Bible.)

If you live where the cicadas sing, you know what I'm talking about and just how loud and noisy they can be. If you don't, listen to ours, as I recorded them in our oak tree in our backyard this past weekend. This will give you an idea of what it sounds like pretty much all day long.  When darkness falls, they stop and give the frogs and crickets center stage.