Third-graders at Cumberland Elementary School in suburban Chicago colored, cut out, and glued paper to create cicadas with membranous wings while expressing their fears about what's about to happen in Illinois. Ta.
“Some people think cicadas suck out brains,” said eight-year-old Willa, a redhead wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.
9-year-old Christopher said as he enthusiastically colored the cicadas. “I don't like noise.”
“It's kind of scary,” said 8-year-old Madison, picking up markers scattered on a green table. “What if they do something to me?”
Don't worry, Madison and Willa: Cicadas don't actually bite people, preferring to suck the sap from trees. (And Christopher, earplugs might help.)
Illinois is the center of cicada emergence in the United States, with cicada emergence occurring almost everywhere, and two neighboring cicada families, Brood XIX (Great Southern Brood) and Brood XIII (Northern Illinois Brood). It is the only state where this species emerges. Soil all at once. The double emergence of two groups of cicadas is the first to occur since 1803 and is expected to last about six weeks.
Scientists predict the state will soon become a carpet of buzzing, crawling red-eyed insects.
“What's special about these two species is that they cover almost all of Illinois,” said Allen Laurence, associate curator of entomology at the Peggy Notebaert Museum of Nature in Chicago. “So for us in Illinois, there's no getting away from them.”
Semimania is spreading across the state. Cicada fans are eager to plan camping, hiking, or just enjoying the insects in their own backyards. Out-of-state travelers drive or fly from places where cicadas are rare or non-existent. A cicada-themed public art project in Chicago will decorate the city with hundreds of replicas of the ornate insects.
And schools are preparing students for cicada emergence, hoping the education will both ease anxiety and encompass real-world entomology lessons.
“We're trying to desensitize them a little bit,” said Elena Todorovic, an art teacher at Cumberland School. Cumberland School is planning a “Semi-Parade A'' for the entire school. “It’s going to be real.”
Those upset by the idea of a trillion cicadas crawling across half the country, covering lawns and driveways and crunching underfoot, may feel rebellious in the coming weeks. But there's also charm and joy, and the enthusiasm carries echoes of the recent solar eclipse that captured the attention of millions of Americans who were awestruck by the rare natural phenomenon.
“People say, 'It's a plague, it's scary, it's going to get in your hair,'” said Roger McMullan, author of the graphic novel “Cicada Apocalypse,” who plans to fly to Illinois to hatch. “But they don't bite, they don't sting, they're not venomous or venomous. They're just adorable little guys hanging out and sucking sap.”
Cicadas are no ordinary insects, enthusiasts say. They say it evokes nostalgia, is the soothing sound of summer, and brings a tranquility that borders on the spiritual.
Nina Salem, founder of the Insect Sanctuary, a small museum in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood where she makes cicada plasters in her basement, said that the night before they emerged, she was thinking about the lives of cicadas, which spend most of their lives underground. Ta. .
Cicadas use their front legs to create tunnels through the ground to molt and mate. Male cicadas make a familiar buzzing sound and can be overwhelmingly large at their peak. After mating, female cicadas make cuts in tree branches where they lay eggs. The eggs hatch, small nymphs burrow into the soil, and the process begins again.
In most cases, adult cicadas die after only a few weeks of living on the ground, and their bodies fall near where they emerged.
“They have been waiting their whole lives for this moment to be seen, heard, felt and experienced, and we can do it with them,” Salem said. Told. “It's so ephemeral. It's really special. And we can walk around and pick them up like little treasures.”
Erika Kane, a German teacher in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, booked a flight to Chicago for herself and her teenage daughters, Caroline and Genevieve, in mid-May.
They spent much of their childhood in California, where they never saw cicadas. But in 2016, while driving through eastern Ohio, a swarm of cicadas had just emerged. Bugs were everywhere, she recalled.
“It was flying off the windshield. It was very loud,” Kane said. “The girls had never experienced cicadas of any kind before. We all loved it.”
A family trip to Illinois planned this month will take us to the heart of the state, where the two swarms of cicadas would almost overlap, what Kane calls “the Mason-Dixon line of little locusts.” I'm going by car.
She can't wait to get out of the car and be surrounded by the sound of cicadas.
“I remember going to see a symphony orchestra and experiencing the vibrations of the instruments in the room, this high-pitched roar,” Kane said. “It’s like walking into an insect nightclub.”
There's been frenzied speculation online about when the cicadas will emerge from the ground.
Some semi-fans push a meat thermometer into the soil in their backyard and wait for the temperature to reach 64 degrees Fahrenheit at about 6 inches deep. If that happens, cicadas are expected to appear.
This fact has some Illinois residents worried.
A swarm of cicadas that started when Chicago public relations executive Trace Zimmerman was a child in the suburbs has haunted her ever since.
She remembers standing outside her house, staring at the dark, slightly shifting layer of cicadas that covered the sidewalk. Some of the cicadas were alive, but many were dead and motionless, with large, empty red eyes, Zimmerman said.
She and her brother Jeff had brooms and were tasked with sweeping the sidewalks clear of the cicadas that swarmed the grass.
“It was like snow, covering everything,” she said. “But it was a bug.”
She isn't worried about the large number of cicadas in West Town, near downtown Chicago, but she does visit her childhood home several times a week to care for her mother. There, she has already seen holes in the soil near large, mature trees, a sure sign that cicadas are coming.
Zimmerman created T-shirts with cicadas replacing the four stars on Chicago's flag as a way to allay fears about cicadas.
At Cumberland Elementary School in Des Plaines, cicada art has already been posted in the hallways, and all classes at the school are now receiving cicada education.
Master naturalist Lynora Jensen's daughter teaches fourth grade at Cumberland College, and she always comes to school, trying to calm her students' fears and gently help them feel like cicadas. There is.
“For me, being afraid is unacceptable,” she said. “Education helps children be fearless and curious. We want children to feel good.”
Willa, one of the third-year students at Cumberland College, said she heard many students talk about the fear of cicadas. She has been trying to spread the word that they are friendly.
“They’re just bugs,” she said.