Brood X: The Cicadas in Princeton

Carcasses at
base of tree

 I first encountered the cicadas a week ago when I thought I was hearing a strange noise across the water at Lake Carnegie.  Then I unmistakenly heard them while practicing the organ at the Kingston Presbyterian Church.   We can hear them from inside our apartment but the sounds were not all that loud.  The assumption is that the ground here was disturbed in the last 17 years and thus the cicadas did not survive on our grounds. 

Last evening we went to Jeff and Susan's for a Memorial Day cookout. We got out of our car and were bombarded with the sound of cicadas.  Suddenly we could understand what people were writing about--many decibels of sound.  We walked to the deck where we could see some cicadas struggling for life.  Jeff and Susan had put up the awning so that we would not have them falling into our food!  Jeff said he had to shake them out of his shirt after mowing the lawn earlier this week. 

Clinging to life
on fence

This morning we sat outside PJ's Pancake House in Kingston to have breakfast with our friends, the Moorheads.  When trucks went by on Route 27, the sound of cicadas was drowned out.  Otherwise, our conversation may have been a bit louder than usual to make ourselves heard!

This is definitely a biological phenomenon worth recording and remembering.   Will we be around in 17 years for the next emergence?  Will we be aware of it if we are?  Who knows?  

-------------Saturday--We can hear the cicadas on CBS where they are filming the Memorial Champtionship Golf Tournament.  From Ohio somewhere.  

------------Sunday--Susan's post on Facebook.  

--------------a week later--There is a new two pitch sound that we are hearing.  The word on Facebook is that is the male's call.  It sounds like electrical wires sound.  I looked at the tree out of the yellow bedroom window and could see the little (not so little) critters jumping all over.  One got into the house yesterday--maybe on our clothes as we came in from outdoors.  We will check ourselves at the bottom of the steps from now on.  

June 14  The saga continues.  Our pastor mentioned during the livestream service that a cicada was joining him on the platform.  This morning Jim said he heard that two note sound and it sounded louder than usual.  It was.  The cicada was doing his mating call from Jim's back.  

June 30