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Cicadas (again)
Jun. 8th, 2007 11:33 amOK, I've now seen one, and heard many, but not here. It happened while I was in Park Ridge to go to the dentist yesterday. She asked if we had any around and I said no, and she said they were all over in Park Ridge.
Sure enough, on my way back out to highway 72, when I stopped at a traffic light, one landed on my windshield. They are not very good at flying, probably because they are so large and heavy. So I opened my windows to listen, and the sound was there, particularly in the parks and forest preserves as I passed through. It's quite different from the annual cicadas that we do have every year. Instead of a high pitched buzzing whine, to me it sounds like the rustle of dead leaves in the wind, but amplified a thousandfold. It's a chatter rather than a buzz, and it rises and falls in waves.
As soon as I listened for a few seconds, I realized that I have indeed heard that sound before. Presumably that was either here in Illinois, but 17 years ago, or farther back when I lived in Michigan. Michigan has two different cycles of the cicada, so there are more possible years when I might have heard it. In any case, I did not know on the previous occasion what it was, or that it came around so rarely.
Frankly, I like it. It's rather pleasant, in a natural sort of way, and I even have an association with warm summer and outdoors that must go back to that prior occasion. It is also much preferable to the sound of human babies squalling, dogs barking, dirt bikes snarling, or coworkers shouting shrilly to one another over a distance of 30 feet, all of which I seem to have to put up with daily...
Sure enough, on my way back out to highway 72, when I stopped at a traffic light, one landed on my windshield. They are not very good at flying, probably because they are so large and heavy. So I opened my windows to listen, and the sound was there, particularly in the parks and forest preserves as I passed through. It's quite different from the annual cicadas that we do have every year. Instead of a high pitched buzzing whine, to me it sounds like the rustle of dead leaves in the wind, but amplified a thousandfold. It's a chatter rather than a buzz, and it rises and falls in waves.
As soon as I listened for a few seconds, I realized that I have indeed heard that sound before. Presumably that was either here in Illinois, but 17 years ago, or farther back when I lived in Michigan. Michigan has two different cycles of the cicada, so there are more possible years when I might have heard it. In any case, I did not know on the previous occasion what it was, or that it came around so rarely.
Frankly, I like it. It's rather pleasant, in a natural sort of way, and I even have an association with warm summer and outdoors that must go back to that prior occasion. It is also much preferable to the sound of human babies squalling, dogs barking, dirt bikes snarling, or coworkers shouting shrilly to one another over a distance of 30 feet, all of which I seem to have to put up with daily...
