2008 Woodie Awards
The "much-maligned" life of cicadas explored
John Doucet
Issue date: 3/22/07 Section: Editorial
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There are some cicadas that pop up every year-sorta like the flu-and some that pop up every decade or so-sorta like a President Bush. These latter types are called periodical cicadas, and the most common of the periodicals (interestingly, another library allusion) is the 17-year cicada. Nymphs of these cicadas have been nipping plant juice from succulent rootlets for seventeen years before they split open and become adult.
Imagine a newborn cicada nymph just emerged from its eggshell high up in the split-branch of that pine tree in your front yard just outside your living room window. What would it have experienced as a baby in 1990 while glimpsing your television set during its painstaking crawl down the pine bark to its new muddy home: Nelson Mandela is free but Manuel Noriega is no longer, Margaret Thatcher resigns and Lech Walesa reigns, Communist Parties in both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union relinquish power, Iraq invades Kuwait, Germany is one country again, "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" debut, Oliver North is cleared but Milli and Vanilli are convicted, the Hubble Telescope is launched, and - most importantly - there are more cicadas in North America than dollars of the Federal debt.
Perhaps the 1990 event most disappointing to the 2007 adult cicadas is the film industry's decision to change the "X"-rating to "NC-17." Without this traditionally stigmatic rating, cicadas burrowing into the ground in 1990 will have missed seventeen years of movies that they could have fooled their parents into allowing them to see. There is no solace in 2007 for cicada adults, particularly in North America, because tiny, claw-held DVDs and players are only available in Japan. What's worse, is that adult cicadas live for only up to six weeks, which means that, if we subtract a couple of hours per day for calling and mating, and if we consider coincident populations of bird predators, cicada killer wasps, and the dreaded cicada abdomen fungus, it's likely that a 2007 cicada will only get to watch one half of the director's cut of "American Psycho".
The Cicada Class of 2007 will be arriving soon. It may have escaped your notice that this batch of 17-year cicadas will be about the same age as you when you first arrived at college. Essentially, these are your brethren, your colleagues, your age-groupies. Like them, you should get out of the burrow, shake off that mud, unfurl those wings and know your seventeen years. And when you find yourself quiet in the library, hide those roots, because there's no eating in the library.
Imagine a newborn cicada nymph just emerged from its eggshell high up in the split-branch of that pine tree in your front yard just outside your living room window. What would it have experienced as a baby in 1990 while glimpsing your television set during its painstaking crawl down the pine bark to its new muddy home: Nelson Mandela is free but Manuel Noriega is no longer, Margaret Thatcher resigns and Lech Walesa reigns, Communist Parties in both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union relinquish power, Iraq invades Kuwait, Germany is one country again, "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" debut, Oliver North is cleared but Milli and Vanilli are convicted, the Hubble Telescope is launched, and - most importantly - there are more cicadas in North America than dollars of the Federal debt.
Perhaps the 1990 event most disappointing to the 2007 adult cicadas is the film industry's decision to change the "X"-rating to "NC-17." Without this traditionally stigmatic rating, cicadas burrowing into the ground in 1990 will have missed seventeen years of movies that they could have fooled their parents into allowing them to see. There is no solace in 2007 for cicada adults, particularly in North America, because tiny, claw-held DVDs and players are only available in Japan. What's worse, is that adult cicadas live for only up to six weeks, which means that, if we subtract a couple of hours per day for calling and mating, and if we consider coincident populations of bird predators, cicada killer wasps, and the dreaded cicada abdomen fungus, it's likely that a 2007 cicada will only get to watch one half of the director's cut of "American Psycho".
The Cicada Class of 2007 will be arriving soon. It may have escaped your notice that this batch of 17-year cicadas will be about the same age as you when you first arrived at college. Essentially, these are your brethren, your colleagues, your age-groupies. Like them, you should get out of the burrow, shake off that mud, unfurl those wings and know your seventeen years. And when you find yourself quiet in the library, hide those roots, because there's no eating in the library.
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