Locust Shells

[rain_gryphon]

Locust shells on my front yard maple tree, with yellow lichen. Some people insist on calling them "cicadas", but these are the same people who call buffalo "bison".



I grew up in southern Indiana, and from like 1970 through 1976 or so, we had a locust swarm every summer. After the first few years, they became just part of the background of summer, and nothing special. At the beginning, though, they were amazing! I remember driving out to the country with my aunt and uncle and mother and grandmother, and finding a tree just covered with them, and all the adults were talking about the last time this happened. Seeing them was like some strange link to a time before I was born.

If you live in a place that doesn't have them, or have never seen them, the noise they make is incedible! It's this loud, high-pitched, near-mechanical sound that just fills the world, rising and falling as these millions of little bugs all sing in chorus. In a swarm year, the trees are just covered with the empty shells. The bugs crawl up out of the ground (leaving hundreds of neat round holes), cling to the tree, and the winged adult hatches out of the case, leaving the husk behind. If you look closely, you can see that the shells still have the hollow cases for the sensory hairs attached.



One summer, for whatever reason, it became the thing to do to collect the empty shells, fill them with soap bubble solution, them smash them on your friends.

After '76, they tapered off the next summer, and then were gone. Summer afternoons seemed uncannily quiet.

Comments

[loligo]

Thanks for posting this! There are maps of all the different groups of 13-year and 17-year cicadas that show what years they will hatch in. I just looked at one, and it shows that several counties in southern Indiana are lucky enough to have multiple broods, so between them and the annual cicadas you probably had a really good run!

Looks like I won't be getting a big cicada hatch where I live until 2024...

[rain_gryphon]

You're quite welcome. Do you have a special interest in cicadas, then?

[loligo]

I'm just always happy to see people appreciating invertebrates of any kind! But cicadas are very cool.

[genarti]

In southern Ohio, I grew up calling them cicadas -- I never heard another name for them! There was a big swarm when I was little, in the early '80s, and I remember finding the shells all over for years afterward, clinging in tucked-away corners on trees and under decks and stuff. What a blast of nostalgia -- thank you!

[rain_gryphon]

I'm by no means certain that these shells are recent, but I just noticed them the other day, so I think it's likely. Like you, I recall finding many of the things, by ones and twos, in sheltered locations over the years, like little dusty leftovers of summers past.

[shirebound]

It's this loud, high-pitched, near-mechanical sound that just fills the world

What a great description!

[rain_gryphon]

It's a sound that demands attention, slightly alarming, even, like a high-speed bearing just about to fail. It comes from all directions, rising and falling in unison. And when the noise is at its ebb, you can hear distant swarms, not quite in time, rising and falling themselves. It's inescapable.

[yourlibrarian]

If you live in a place that doesn't have them, or have never seen them, the noise they make is incedible!

Even one can make quite a racket. I remember being outside playing with the frisbee one morning near a tree with one in it, and it was super loud.

[rain_gryphon]

That's supposed to be their mating beacon, but I've long wondered how they can locate one another with all that racket going on.

[earthspirits]

Interesting photos and memories -Thank you for sharing with us!

[rain_gryphon]

You're quite welcome!