What does a massive invasion of bugs have in common with the founding of the state of Iowa? Well, I’m glad you asked.
It turns out that 2024 is a very special year, entomologically speaking. This year marks the co-emergence of the periodic cicada broods XIII and XIX. (I bet that got your attention!) Okay, let me explain. Those obscure Roman numerals refer to the Northern Illinois and Great Southern Broods of cicadas that emerge from late April through June throughout the Midwest, including Eastern Iowa (that’s us!).
Sure, every school child knows that cicadas begin their life as eggs in tree branches. Then they hatch and burrow underground where they live undetected, nursing on the sap of tree roots for 13 to 17 years at which time they burst forth from the earth by the millions like zombies of the living dead.
Curiously, despite their breathtaking numbers, cicadas are almost uniquely benign. They do sing loudly in unison and leave their creepy hollow exoskeletons clutching tree bark, bicycle seats and pretty much everything else. But they don’t hurt plants or animals. They don’t bite or sting humans. In fact, in this stage of their life, cicadas don’t even eat. They just buzz around, rattling like defective toy drones, waiting to be gobbled down by ducks, dogs, birds, bears, squirrels and spiders. Cicadas are the plankton of the prairie. Everything eats them. Even some people find these protein-rich insects pleasantly crunchy and delicious. (No, I’m not going to try it.)
But what makes this year’s emergence of cicadas so remarkable is that it marks the first time the two brood’s respective 13-year cycle and 17-year cycle occur at the same time in 221 years. The last time this happened, there were so many cicadas, people in Chicago had to shovel the bug-eyed bug bodies that piled up thick as snow on the ground.
The year was 1803. That year, on March 1, Ohio became our 17th state. On August 9, Robert Fulton tested his steam-powered paddleboat on the Seine River in France. (It sank.) On April 5, Beethoven conducted the first performance of his 2nd Symphony. And on April 30, 1803, (while the cicada invasion was just getting revved up) our third president, Thomas Jefferson announced the purchase of The Louisiana Purchase for the staggering sum of $15 million, thereby doubling the size of the country. And, yes, included in that vast, uncharted wilderness, was what would eventually become (on December 28, 1846) the state of Iowa, home to oceans of corn, the nicest people anywhere and a life-sized sculpture of a cow made entirely out of butter.
Who knows what Iowa will be like in 221 years when the next great cicada invasion occurs? Or if there will even be an Iowa by then. Or life on Earth as we now know it. In the year 2245 when millions of cicadas again burrow out of the ground, blinking into the sunlight, peaceful, without hunger or thirst or territoriality, driven only to mate in the few weeks they have left to live, will they find they have inherited a world without humans? Will they even notice that we’re gone.
Living in Iowa: The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming!
April 4, 2024