The trillions of cicadas last seen by Thomas Jefferson

It’s been over 200 years since these two broods of cicadas hatched at the same time. Just by chance, I’ll be traveling right through the middle of the swarms. 

Transcript

Seated in the Oval Office of the White House in 1803, the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was studying a document when he heard something at the window. It was a buzzing sound, louder than he had ever heard before. Walking out onto the lawn he was shocked to see thousands upon thousands of cicadas carpeting every tree, shrub, and plant before him. The noise was deafening.

Welcome to Expat Chatter! This is Brenda Arnold
 
Jefferson’s destiny is about to befall parts of the Eastern seaboard and Midwestern U.S. Over the next month, two different broods of cicadas will hatch at the same time. 

This last happened over 200 years ago, around the same time the Louisiana Purchase was signed, the agreement for a historic land purchase from France that Jefferson was, uh, brooding over. The cicada brood designated by the Roman numeral XIX hatches every 13 years and Brood XIII, every 17 years. According to the website Cicada Mania, Brood XIX will be found in 15 states across the Southeast and Midwest, and Brood XIII will hatch in around three states in the Midwest. 

The two broods might cross paths in Iowa and Illinois, but they’ll hardly overlap. I think that was very reasonable of the cicadas to reach a franchise agreement before going underground to avoid cannibalizing each other’s markets. They spend 99.5 percent of their lives underground feeding on tree roots as so-called “nymphs” and looking mighty ugly in the process. The entomologist who came up with that name clearly misspent his youth reading too much Greek mythology. 

I’m sure the trees will be glad when those suckers finally get moving. They probably spent the past 13 (or 17) years thinking, “Excuse me down there, would you mind morphing and flying away already? I said you could feed off my roots to tide you over but you are most definitely abusing my hospitality.” Perhaps if we get close to the trees during cicada season we’ll hear them give a collective sigh of relief. If only the noise of the cicadas didn’t drown it out.

 I am about to travel to exactly those areas of the U.S. where the cicadas will be hatching. I considered bringing a mosquito net until I googled their size and realized that a badminton racket would be a more appropriate means of defense, as some species can get pretty big. Personally, I’d love to see a Megapomponia imperatoria, a pretty fancy-schmancy name for a seven-centimeter-long bug with bulging eyes big enough to wink at you. Perhaps it would be wearing a crown and carrying a scepter. Except that cicada only lives in Asia, so no luck. Also, insects don’t have eyelids, so they couldn’t wink at you, either, but you get the message.

 Cicadas don’t bite or sting, so the only thing to be feared is the cacophony. So I’ll leave my (imaginary) mosquito net at home and leave my badminton racket in the umbrella rack. But I will bring earplugs since the noise of these insects can reach up to 100 decibels, as loud as a police car siren. Their sound reminds me of a horror movie about monsters from outer space that our babysitter let us watch when I was just five, called The Day of the Triffids. I think the sound engineer at the time must have used a recording of the cicadas for the triffids. 

 Returning to Thomas Jefferson back in 1803, the Roman numerals used in the names of these two broods of cicadas weren’t the only ones he had to wrestle with. The document on his desk was for one of the biggest real estate deals of all time: the Louisiana Purchase. The name of this modest land parcel derives from France’s King Louis XIV, who had gladly financed the American War of Independence since those upstart colonials were fighting France’s longtime enemy, Great Britain. But the enormous strain it put on France’s treasury played a major role in sparking the French Revolution in 1789, just a few years after the end of the American war. America’s territory grew by 50 percent at the stroke of a pen.

 So after recovering from the shock at the sight of the cicadas on the White House lawn, Jefferson probably went back inside and began hatching the idea of sending off the two frontiersmen Lewis and Clark on their historic expedition to explore the huge territory the U.S. had just bought.

Even the deafening sound of the cicadas – a sound as loud as a freight train, vacuum cleaner, or lawn mower – couldn’t dampen Jefferson’s mood. But we know he wasn’t making these comparisons because none of those things had been invented yet.

 Stay tuned for cicada updates!

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