Cicadas live here, in Humble, Kingwood, and Atascocita. In all of the south. And parts east and even the Midwest, from what I've. But not the Pacific NW, as far as I know. I'd never heard them before I moved here. I don't like them.The sound a group of cicadas makes is the sound you would hear if you were in the middle of a horror flick that involved insectoid entities — or maybe electrical ones — just before they caught you and ate your brains. Or maybe ate your internal organs, but without killing you first.
My walks in the woods when I first heard the beasties were eerie at best. I knew I shouldn't run, for two reasons. Firstly, because if they were entities out to have me for lunch, then running would only call attention to me. Secondly, if they weren't, then I would look like a lunatic running through the park. I'm used to looking foolish, but seldom for insects. Except for when Bugzilla was in my apartment, of course.
The cidadas were so loud, I could hear them as I drove down West Lake Houston Parkway, with my windows closed and the AC on. Such a thing seems horribly wrong.
I remember reading a story years ago that featured cicadas. The book said they got louder as it grew hotter, and I believe it. In the book, the heat peaked just as the story peaked and I remember only this, as the tension reached its highest pressure: "The cidadas were screaming."
Not like that would lead me to an association with cicadas and terror, of course.
The cicadas just continued and continued to sing, all summer long, reaching their peak in early to mid-August. Right around the time I ventured back to Oregon. When I returned to Houston, the noise had subsided a great deal. It was not long after one of the infrequent rain storms we've had this summer than I finally got a look at one of the bugs, and I have to agree with a friend of mine: they are ugly creatures. Every bit as scary as their sound suggests. If I were able to see the mass of cicadas it takes to make the amount of noise I heard this summer, I probably would leave the state for cooler wetter climes. Brr. Even imagining the sight is enough to give me chills.
Everyone around here tells me about 17-year cicadas. Certainly that is the kind one hears about. But Wikipedia's table of periodic (13- and 17-year) cicadas doesn't list either 2009 or Texas for them. The rest of the cicadas are annual. And yet, one woman told me that her son asked her what the noise was, and he was 20 years old. So apparently he had not heard these in his memory. I have to assume that Wikipedia doesn't have all its facts. And that everything is flexible. After all, the climate is changing, and both flora and fauna are moving northward in the northern hemisphere. I wouldn't be surprised if the cicadas have been interrupted in their usual cycle by the changes. Or that we were now getting the insectoid horrors from Central and South America.
According to Wikipedia again, the beasties are not a threat to humans or other animals. Just to trees. Then again, who is to say what is more correct: Wikipedia, or a horror story?
Do you really want to find out?
