Cicada chaos is flourishing and flying in the American Midwest.
Dead periodical cicadas and nymphal shells pile up at the base of a tree, Saturday, May 18, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. Trillions of once hidden baby bugs are in the air, on the trees and perching upon people's shirts, hats and even faces. – The ground had seemed to undulate at night, alive with bugs. Crawling cicada nymphs, striving to get higher after 17 years underground, marched en masse toward and up trees, pausing to shed their skin and emerge as adults. And then the fun began.
The males are singing for sex and won't stop until they get a female cicada's flapping wing consent. There were places in Illinois the decibel level hit 101, louder than a lawnmower, flowing in waves as an ever-present buzzing drone that seems like aliens descending in a science fiction movie. It is punctuated by bursts of the deeper-toned call “fffaaaro, fffaaaro.”
In Central Illinois, especially around Springfield, the two broods just about overlap. But it's hard to tell which brood a cicada belongs to. Wearing a T-shirt that says “I survived the cicada invasion and all I got was this shirt ” that she won for posing a cicada on a toy skateboard, retiree Cindy Harris of Springfield walked through the Lincoln Garden pointing out cicadas.Jennifer Rydzewski, an insect ecologist at DuPage County Forest Preserve, donned a cicada hoody costume — complete with bulging red eyes made by a 3D printer — that she wore in an educational social media posts and joined a cicada walking tour.
Yet many people are scared or grossed out by the trillions of flying bugs that die soon after mating in a rather pungent pile on the ground.
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