A Sound Break for Your Mind

When you think of hot summer months, what senses come to mind? The smell of cut grass? The taste of ice-cold drinks? The feeling of oppressive humidity? Chances are you also hear in your mind’s ear the buzz of cicadas here and there. Well, this year is different. The ground in the Midwest has hit 65 degrees thus hatching the greatest summer sensory overload since Thomas Jefferson was buying up the Louisiana Territory for today’s equivalent of $.70/acre, the first steamboat was demonstrated in Scotland, and the Napoleonic wars kicked off. 

Yes, it seems obvious for the Sound Journal to comment on the cicada but this is a monumental year for the humble insect. For the first time since 1803 the 13-year and 17-year broods coincide (prime numbers can be stubborn that way). Their individual buzzes combine, interfere and filter to create an otherworldly chorus that ebbs and flows with temperature, wind speed and direction, and one’s proximity to where the little darlings most like to congregate.

Heat matters to them. When the male cicada buzzes out to a female it creates friction and heats his body, allowing his body temperature to exceed that of the air temperature and increase his output, so to speak. The hotter the air outside, the more audible he becomes to the females. Multiply by 500 billion (we assume things are apportioned fifty-fifty) and we have a chorus of epic scale. (Things are much less raucous on cloudy, cooler days.)

So, while many will shudder at the deluge of a trillion cicadas emerging from the ground, getting under foot, and taking flight, give a nod to this inch-and-a-half creature with the apparatus and passion to top a chain saw in loudness. Don’t think of this summer as Cicadapocolypse as so many outlets have coined it – for one thing, the bugs are harmless, just overwhelming. Think of it as Cicadapalooza: it’s loud, it’s in Illinois, it’s a little trashy, and it willend. 

And it won’t be this big again until 2245.