I Love Cicadas. Here Is Why.

I remember my long-ago childhood in Rogers Park. I’d walk along Farwell, or Greenview, or Pratt Avenues after dinner. My friends and I would stop in a neighborhood park in the early evening as the sunlight faded. We would catch grasshoppers and put them in glass jars with holes punched in the lids. We would chase Monarch butterflies as The Butterfly of Love played on someone’s transistor radio. And we watched as hundreds of fireflies illuminated the darkness.

Most years since then have been pretty uneventful on the insect front. But this year is a special one. Like everyone celebrating a 68^th birthday in 2024, I was born in 1956. That year, like 2024, was a 17-year cycle cicada year. And I am as thrilled as a newly hatching nymph in black dirt about my fifth time crossing flight paths with this septendecimal brood.

I know most people can’t stand the little buggers. My family is no exception. They hate the noise; they hate the beady red eyes; they hate the fluttering creatures landing in their hair. Our neighborhood is filled with spasmodic dance moves as both kids and adults do their best to shake them off.

But while the haters hate, hate, hate, I love the little buggers. How can you not respect creatures with such perfectly tuned bodies that in their somnambulant larval state they can accurately tick off 17 years? And how can you not feel empathy for critters whose entire conscious life is limited to a few weeks?

Are they loud? Sure they are. When one became attached to Cooper’s leash and snuck inside our house, its clacking was astonishingly raucous. But the drone of thousands high up in the trees is calming, almost hypnotic. As I walk through the neighborhood, I find the sound a pleasant backdrop to the words of the novel I am listening to through my headphones. The rumblings of school buses and garbage trucks are much more distracting than the insect’s overhead buzz.

I don’t mind when the rapidly beating wings brush against my arms or legs. It’s fine if the creatures settle onto my shirt for a moment. They won’t bite, sting, or spit on me. They will soon flutter away as they choose a mate from among their millions of compatriots. Speeddating at its finest!

I will be 84 the next time this brood of cicadas reappears. Maybe I enjoy them because they remind me of the many years I still have before I greet them again. And maybe, just maybe, they remind me of those simpler days of my youth, when grasshoppers and butterflies were enough to light my way home.

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