Plague wasn’t enough for you? Just wait for the ‘locusts’
If you thought COVID-19 wasn’t biblical enough, have I got news for you: The locusts are coming.
Well, technically not locusts, although Bob Dylan thought they were. They’re cicadas, they’re Brood X, and they are going to be popping in Princeton (and anywhere there are old trees) in a few weeks time.
Listen: Every year, cicadas come out. But every 17 years, Brood X (that’s pronounced Brood “ten,” not the more sexy and dangerous sounding “Brood ‘ex,’” unfortunately) come crawling out of the ground. And they come. And come. And keep coming. I’m telling you, for about a six week period in downtown Princeton and environs, you’re going to think the world is ending. These cicadas are big — like three inches — they are everywhere, they are loud. And they shed their shells and eventually die and you’ll see inch or twothick drifts of them as you walk down Nassau Street and the buzzing — oh, the buzzing — well …
“They made the cow bells inaudible,” is how the pastor of the Gloria Dei Swedish Lutheran Church of Philadelphia phrased it back in 1715, in what was the first written record of the cicadas’ arrival.
“Some singular flies came out of the ground, the English called them locusts. the holes could be seen everywhere, they were encased in shells out of which they crawled, it seemed most wonderful how they were able to burrow their way through the ground and when they began to fly they made a peculiar noise,” the pastor continued.
Of course, I wasn’t there to hear the guy speak, but I was told this by Gene Kritsky, a professor of biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, the editor-in-chief of American Entomologist, the magazine of the Entomological Society of America, and the author of 10 books, including the recently released “Periodical Cicadas: The Brood X Edition.”
“They’ll start coming out when ground reaches 64 degrees, usually after a day or two after the first day it gets into the 80s,” he told me. “And if there’s a good soaking rain that really gets them coming out. It takes about 2 weeks for the vast majority to come out of the ground, each could live for about a month, so it’s a six weeks period in all.”
Again — these giant bugs spend 17 years living beneath the surface, then they come up for air, mate, and die.
“They’re 4-8 inches below the surface, and they feed on tree roots,” Kritsky said. “The whole process of coming up is is to mate. The males sing, the females lay their eggs in tree branches, the eggs hatch in 6-8 weeks, as soon as those nymphs come out of the egg, they drop to the ground. Spiders and beetles come after them, and the survivors find a crack in the soil and get below the soil as soon as possible, and by New Year’s Day they are 10-12 inches below the surface.”
Where they will remain for the next 17 years. And then they rise up and make such a racket. And there are a ton of them. Kritsky estimated it to be roughly 356 per square meter. Figure about 1.5 million per square acre. We’re talking trillions across a wide swath of the mid-Atlantic, out to Ohio, south to Kentucky. And these are large insects. They are — again — three inches long. With bright orange wings. And devil red eyes. And loud enough to drown out cow bells. As well as your innermost thoughts. As well as honorary degrees bestowed on Bob Dylan, who was doing that very thing at Princeton University in 1970 when the cicadas were out, prompting him to write “Day of the Locusts.”
As for the “why Princeton?” it’s because you need mature trees for the process to keep continuing. Granted, it’s happening in the woods around your house, but really: Nassau Street — at least back in 2004 — really felt like the set of an alien invasion movie. It’s bananas. When the time comes, it is 100% worth checking out.
I can’t wait. Something different, you know?