Cicada Redux

Cicada crash. That’s an empty flask of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky you see. Some of these characters had a little too much fun. Photos by David Hoefer.

David Hoefer of Louisville, Ky., the co-editor of The Last Resort, bids a fond farewell to the Brood X cicadas. If you would like to submit a post to ​Clearing the Fog, please contact us here.

The cicada bloom is finally starting to wind down in my neck of the woods (which is the Louisville Highlands). It is increasingly possible to hold an intelligible conversation with another human outside the house and to travel the sidewalks without the regular crunch of dead or dying bugs underfoot. 

That said, I had a final cicada experience that might be worth relating. I’m currently taking an online birding course through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (an organization whose praises I’ve sung previously on this blog). One of the exercises, called “sit-spotting,” involves sitting outdoors for 15 minutes, observing the immediate surroundings, and making note in a field journal of all that which most impinges on the five senses. In a Kentucky suburban environment, that ought to mean birds, squirrels, chipmunks, bees, cats, breezes, floral scents, etc. I did this a couple of weeks back, when the cicadas were still hot and heavy. Not wise. My entries read something like: 

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• Heavy drone in the air. Cicadas sawing away.
• The driveway is a carpet of wings and shells. 
• One of the adults just flew past me. And another. 
• Hey, finally—a bird. It’s a House Sparrow eating one of the cicadas. 
• What’s that on my neck? Yup, a cicada. (Editorial aside: I’ve gotten good at grabbing them by the wings and launching them into space.)
• Another cicada flyby. And another. 
• The sparrow has corralled a second bug. Absolutely brutal vivisection. 
• Wait—was that a chipmunk? No, just wishful thinking. 
• Small branches with dead leaves in the yard—branch flagging. The females are laying their eggs. 
• Sparrow on bug number three. 
• Now they’re landing on my shoulder.
• Sheesh—cicada number four for our sparrow. Is gluttony a sin in the animal kingdom?
• My fifteen minutes are up. I’m going inside.

​I’ll give the cicadas this: every 17 years they put on what is truly a command performance. I guess part of the diversity of nature that we always go on about, is that sometimes there is very little diversity at all.
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From the cicada Kama Sutra?