Requiem for Wonder
by Nancy Stranahan
Early in the month of June they rose up quietly from the earth. At dusk. Millions of creatures from the deep, never before having seen the light. Laboriously they crawled upward on twig and tree to begin their long-awaited transformation. Collectively these invertebrates stage one of the greatest visual and auditory spectacles that can be witnessed anywhere in the natural world. Far from exotic, this event is true home-town, taking place ONLY in our own Eastern deciduous forest and no where else on the planet. In Ohio and most of the northern hardwood states, the event occurs only once every 17 years.
17 years. It was 1991 when the last hatch of periodical cicadas synchronized their song over Ohio’s River Valley, Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Pennsylvania. The last time I heard the chant I was 39 years old. I remember at the time being dismayed by the immensity of the event – the first hatch I ever remembered witnessing. I winced at the loudness of the chant, I felt overwhelmed by the numbers, and in my ignorance, I needlessly fretted about the trees.
At 56 I respond differently. For four weeks I have listened to the cicadas greet each morning in the sun-drenched canopies of the high forest, filling the woods with exuberant song. To mate. To sing praises the sun, and hymns to the cycle of life. And then to die. As I write, the last of the survivors are dropping from the skies like fallen flower petals, their bodies spent of passion. Yet left behind in the sunlit twigs of the canopy are the eggs of the next generation, another turn in the wheel of life. I don’t want to let them go, though I know I must. As the last ones sing, I try to commit this spectacle to the memory of my body, and their poetry to the memory of my heart.
17 years. From a human perspective, that’s an extremely long time. For an insect it is even more so, making the periodical cicadas one of the longest living insects on the planet. To my knowledge, none of the other 3000 cicada species of the world live so long. Most live an average of 2-8 years, laying eggs in staggered populations that produce modest emergences each year. Such are the Dog Day cicadas that sound off each year in late summer, their drones foretelling the return of schooldays and autumn.
But that is not the case with the “magical” cicadas of the genus known appropriately as Magicicada. These periodical cicadas have life cycles that are both lengthy and synchronous, the entire brood emerging all within a few days of each other. In the northeastern states of the Eastern Forest, this occurs once every 17 years, and once every thirteen years in the warmer climate of the Southeast. Unlike the common cicadas, the population density of Magicicadas is extraordinarily high, as many as 1.4 million insects per acre.
The periodic cicada is such a world enigma it befuddled the Europeans who witnessed them in 1633, twelve years after the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving in Plymouth. Having no familiarity with the phenomenon of periodical cicadas, they turned to biblical tales of locust plagues for explanation, hence the “locust” misnomer that continues today despite the fact that true Old World locusts are actually grasshoppers. They mistakenly thought the female cicadas were poisoning the trees with stingers, rather than simply depositing their eggs. It took over 150 years for anyone to notice that in any geographic region, the brood hatch was as predictable and magical as a lunar eclipse, and just as benign.
The emergence of periodical cicadas has an immense effect on the forest ecosystem. The death of so many cicadas coming all at once, and the dropping of thousands of leafy twigs that result from their egg laying, collectively decompose on the forest floor to give a sudden burst of fertilizer. A year of cicadas actually invigorates the trees, just as does the pruning of an orchardist. Next spring will be a sweet growing year for the forest.
As for periodical cicadas’ effect on wildlife, predators feasting upon them quickly reach the saturation point. The girths of raccoon, skunk, fox and coyote swell to the point of bursting, and the larger insect-eating songbirds become positively glutted. Even the woodland Native Americans feasted on the egg-filled female cicadas just as they emerged from the ground and were still soft. For one short month our native forest becomes a kind of Eden. Suddenly the world gives us all we can eat, a cornucopia of sluggish and sweet cicadas that can be literally plucked right off the trees!! Yet, by the time the predators’ populations rise in response, the insects are long gone. Scientists call this “predator satiation,” a strategy which, despite the initial raw carnage, has worked for the benefit of periodical cicadas for millions of years. Cicada defense is not toxicity, nor rapid flight, but each other… the simple strategy of sheer numbers.
Male periodical cicadas gather together in large chorus centers to acoustically attract females over large distances, just like male prairie chickens at a lek or spring peepers gathered by a vernal pond. Male cicadas prefer disturbed sunlit openings in the forests and edges where the trees are youthful and vigorous, trees that can be counted upon to thrive over the next 13-17 years for their offspring. But while the males merely choose the environment, the females actually mold it. Each batch of eggs laid in a twig actually snaps the leafy branch from the tree. Hundreds of prunings from a single tree allows a considerable increase in light to reach the forest floor. Interestingly, cicadas fare extremely well in suburban and village landscapes, where humanity accidentally sculpts cicada-scapes — a perfect environment for the young larvae which may feed on grass roots before digging deeper into the soil to feed upon tree roots. In such locations cicadas can reach breathtaking densities. In contrast, in the deep forests of our Arc of Appalachia Preserve System cicada numbers are far less overwhelming. Rather than deafening, we find the calls of the periodical cicadas merely invigorating, or even soothing, like the katydid chants of autumn.
Male cicadas are always on the move. All day long, they emit a few bursts of song, then fly to a new perch in a flutter of orange-veined wings to begin the cycle again. The flight dance requires a tremendous amount of energy, and despite myths to the contrary, mature cicadas do eat, sucking fluids from woody stems.
Males have no less than FIVE different calls. One is an alarm call, one is the main chorus call, and three are courtship calls. When a chorusing male succeeds in getting the attention of a female (big males are preferred!), she signals her interest with wing flicks. In recognition he switches to courtship call #1, and attempts to elicit a serenading duet with her, an invitation that if accepted, acoustically separates the pair from the masses. “You are the one.” If she responds in sync, he begins to walk toward her, switching to courtship call #2. If she continues to duet, he eventually reaches her, and just before copulation, switches to the fast clicking of courtship call #3, a song which continues until actual intercourse. “Back off you guys, she is mine.”
It’s amazing to contemplate, but there are three species of periodical cicadas outside my door, not one, but three!! Three separate species that have tightly synchronized their lives and thrown their lots together. Any innovative cicada who dares to emerge out of sync is usually quickly annihilated. See, people aren't the only ones who succeed best in conformity. Without the ability to satiate their predators, small populations are usually doomed.
Although all species of Magicicada are characterized by black upper bodies and bright red eyes, each species has distinctive markings and can be identified by its unique song. Magicicada septendecim, the Pharaoh Cicada, is by far the largest species, having broad orange stripes on its abdomen. It make a high shrill weeeeeeeeeee-whoa call (or phaaaaaar-raoh), a song descending rapidly at the end. In chorus, males sound similar to the distant trill of American toads, a song that is much higher in frequency than the other two species.
Magicicada septemdeclura is the least common of the three species. It is small-bodied with thin orange bands on its belly. Here in the Highlands decluras display good taste in choosing habitat. They especially like hanging out by the river in shade trees that extend over mowed lawns. Their call sounds like an electrical line shorting out; ticking, sizzling and sputtering for up to 30 seconds, much longer than the 3 second sound burst of the other two species.
But it is Magicicada cassini that is by far my favorite. It is this species that seduced me to cross the line from earnest interest in periodical cicadas to affirmed love. Small bodied and pure black, cassinis are the only species of the three that will sometimes, in the peak of their season’s performance, form chorusing centers that sing in synchrony. To walk in the midst of a synchronous cassini chant is a peak life experience. Sound, after all, reaches us so much more deeply than mere vision. Sound penetrates us, merges with us, vibrates us. Literally, sound stirs our body and moves our soul.
Two weeks ago I walked into the vortexes of several cassini choruses in the high heat of the afternoon, each vortex composed of thousands of males singing in unison. A single call of a cassini sounds a bit like someone pulling the starting cord on a stubborn gasoline engine. Mechanical. Strident. But when cassinis come together en masse they form ascending waves of sound, interspersed by seconds of ticking silence, an effect so powerful it feels like you have been admitted into the heart of an alien esoteric ritual. The sound waves move through your body, lifting you up and then back down. I felt like an elf lying prostrate on the chest of a snoring giant. Must I really wait until I am 73 to experience this wonder again?
How will we, in the end, prefer to measure our days? By the sun, I am 56 years old. By the moon I am 720. By earth revolution I am 20,527. By cicada time, I am only 3. Perhaps we need a span of time this slow to measure our personal evolution toward wisdom. I pray the next seventeen years of my life will open my heart even further, so when I am 4, I can inhale the pleasures of life even more deeply. If so, it will be worth the wait.
For two hundred years we have had to witness so many tragic assaults on our forests. The vanishing of the chestnuts, Carolina parakeets, wolves and passenger pigeons. Acid rain killing the forests on the Appalachian spine. Hemlocks dying in our valleys. Mountaintops of trees removed for the utility of underlying coal. And now, the emerald ash borer wiping out four species of ash. Yet, despite this all, for the moment anyway, the cicadas are still here with us. Whispering to us of a forest past. Reminding us of a time when animals were still the conveyors of power, capable of evoking awe and majesty. Despite all that has happened, periodic cicadas have appeared once again, this June, right here in the Ohio Valley. For another year of song.
To me it is the song of hope.
