Prompt Blog #4: Cicadas

The periodic cicadas emerged over a swath of land in Central Pennsylvania in 2008. My first born child, Clara, was not yet a year old. I left her and my wife with my mother-in-law while I went with my father, father-in-law, and two brothers-in-law to camp out by Penns Creek for a week. We chased these 17-year ghosts—broad-faced, anterior bullet-pointed, wings hemmed with orange veins—not for themselves in particular, but for the trout that would gorge themselves on these special treats.

There’s nothing that really weird or spectacular about the periodic cicadas other than they can get lost in our memories. They, like all insects, live in our “world” mostly to breed, and lay their eggs. Those eggs then hatch into larva that eat and grow and eat and grow until they’re ready to become adults and breed themselves. The cycle of all life really. Mayflies, stoneflies, and caddis flies (other types of trout food) are all similar, as are many other terrestrial insects.

In fact, their development is almost identical to the yearly cicada. These yearly versions of the cicada are also known as the “dog-day cicada” because they emerge every year (almost everywhere in PA) during the hottest days of July and August. The only difference (other than color) is that the periodic cicadas emerge by the millions compared to the dog-day’s thousands, and the periodic cicadas only come around during May and June every 17 years.

Well, actually that’s not true. Some broods of Magicicada (as the periodic brand of the insect is scientifically known) come out every 13 years. Moreover, it’s not like a blanket emergence all over the United States east of the Mississippi. The Magicicadas pop up out of their underground layers in patches, non-concurrently, all over the East, South, and Midwest. The 13 year broods tend to be more southernly, while the 17 year broods tend to reside in cooler climates. So technically, if you want to travel around the country every summer, you could find periodic cicadas almost every year.

Honestly, I can understand why someone would want to follow them like a “Dead Head” touring with the band. Their emergence is amazing. You hear them before you see the signs of them. Their calls—not quite buzzing, not quite chirping—are so loud that you can hear them if your windows are up and your radio is on.  Their song crescendos and decrescendos almost as if they were conducted by the wind. Then, before you see the bug itself, you see its remnants. Shucks, paper thin, cling to the bark of host trees. Holes, about a ½ inch in diameter, magically appear in the dirt around most trees, as if a giant walked around the woods in golf cleats. Finally, you see them. Awkward and clunky, wings rattling like an old propeller driven airplane, they fly—barely. Their distended rears hanging low like broken landing gear. And when they lose their strength (or when the wind blows them in), they smack the water and churn the surface like a fly in soup. That’s when the trout go nuts. The biggest brown trout slash at the surface trying stuff their jowls full of crunchy goodness.

According to my in-laws, humans also eat them. My mother-in-law said that they picked them off of the trees during one emergence of her youth, and ate “locusts and honey.” I did not bring myself to actually taste one during our camping trip. Maybe next time.

They’re really not locusts, though, which are a grasshopper species. They don’t descend upon crops and consume them with Biblical fury. They will infest trees and drowned out heavy metal music blared from a car radio, but they do not bring death and destruction. Actually, they bring life.

Onondaga Indians from NY still share stories orally of how their people were saved from famine by a cicada emergence. Dogs, birds, and fish will feast, and for fish species like trout, there appears to be a correlation between cicada hatches and the number and size of trout that survive the warm, harsh summers of Pa. trout streams.

When we camped along the banks of Penns Creek at Poe Paddy State Park, this gluttony was evident. My brothers-in-law would seemingly milk dozens of cicadas off of a tree branch into Mason jars, then pierce their hard exoskeleton with hooks, stringing them on their lines. They would open the bail of their reels, cast their bait, which was still alive most times, to watch the cicada dance on a leash ten-to-twenty feet above the stream. If they could avoid birds stealing their cicada, they’d eventually tire it out, and it would land in the currents to attract equally hungry fish. My father, father-in-law, and I tossed hand-tied foam imitations with fly rods. Our patterns would splat off of the water under overhanging branches to find eager 18-, 19-, 20-inch brownies.

It was an amazing experience. We’d wake to the call of these phantom choirs, these momentary, mysterious mammoth “flies”; we’d commune with the trout, who partook in body and blood of bugs.

Unfortunately, though, I didn’t get too spend the entire week in woods with the men, fish, and bugs. My daughter got dehydrated from the flu, as was reported by my mother-in-law who came out to camp to inform me. I returned for an afternoon to see her. She seemed to be getting over it, taking some fluids, and her fever dropping. So I returned to camp to fish the next day. Within hours, the flu emerged in me…all over the woods by my father’s pop-top camper. It was a horrible night, and the next day I returned to my in-laws to tough out my own sickness.

On the morning I returned, Clara went into the hospital, her fever worsening and her color turning blue from the dehydration and a lack of oxygen in her blood. I was helpless; unable to travel a distance greater than 10 feet from a toilet. I had to wait in agony while my wife and her mother took Clara to the hospital for an IV. My wife told me later that Clara had to be strapped to a board, jabbed multiple times before the IV took. She cried the whole time.

She came home the next day, and I was feeling better. My wife encouraged me to go back out to camp. I’m not sure if it was because she didn’t want me to miss this once-in-17-years experience, or if she didn’t want me around to re-infect them in the house. So I went back to Penns Creek, only to find that the action had died down. The two days I missed to vomit and diarrhea were too hot for the trout, and they took to feeding in the early morning and evening—when the cicadas were least active. Plus, more and more along the banks, you’d see a wrack line of cicada corpses meaning that their time with us was soon over.

At the same time, I had experienced my first real cicada hatch and missed it, too. Even before the week was up, I started calculating the years until the next hatch. Clara would be 17, about to be 18, maybe graduated from high school.

“This will be a great graduation trip for Clara if she’s into fly fishing!” I said.

My father-in-law, staring into the campfire, simply said, “Don’t wish these years away.”

I can understand where he’s coming from. Seventeen years before, he was where I was: young, with a young family, the cicadas fattening trout. Now, his children were grown, young men and woman. Mothers, uncles—he was a grandfather. Even worse, the next time that the cicadas would come, he may not be able to wade Penns Creek’s strong currents at the age of 70.

I realized how events like this could end up not only marking major points of our lives, but framing our lives, marking the beginnings and the endings. So as soon as I went home, I studied up. I decided to track where each brood would next appear; I’d run after the magic cicada. I’d take Clara, and now my youngest Layla, all over the east coast catching whatever fish would rise to these fire-brushed insects.

Well, the first hatch that I could track down is this year: 2011. The only place they’ll be hatching over trout is in southwestern North Carolina. There’s no way that I’ll make it there.

But there will always be the next one. In Ohio. Or the upper Mississippi. Or maybe I’ll just wait until 2025 when they come back to Penns Creek. No need to rush. No need to chase. Just a need to know they’re there.