Up Close and Personal with the Cicadas

Yesterday, I drove over to Woodstock to visit with my mother-in-law, Frances, and along the way, FINALLY encountered those hard-to-find cicadas in vast numbers.

I turned off Illinois Highway 120 at the second Wonder Lake traffic light and took a side road through a heavily treed area through the Village of Bull Valley. It used to be that we avoided it as I would classify it as a non-road, where the potholes had potholes. It was that bad. It has recently been repaved and a smooth ride except for a short 200 feet stretch where it is the same as it was. The local township road commission has a sign up saying that you're leaving their road when you hit the bad part. Must have been some sort of an intergovermental situation.

Anyway, once past the car-jarring stretch, I encountered cicada paradise. They were everywhere, flying about, on the road itself, and the sound was practically deafening. They are in their last few weeks of life, and it is time to mate. They are frantic.

They fly rather slowly with wings moving rapidly to keep those chunky bodies moving. I had plenty cicada momentos on the windshield and car grill as they didn't get out of the way in time. I stopped at one place and found a dead one and took it with me. This is one ugly bug, let me tell you. Even though they aren't exactly fast, they are still hard to catch by hand. I came up empty in my efforts.

For some reason, they liked to sit on the pavement and at times, as I approached, as many as a hundred would rise in unison, many to do kamikazes onto the car.

On the way back from Woodstock, I drove the same road. I had the windows open when suddenly something came in through the rider's side, hit the seatback, and ended up down the back of my shirt. Scared me a bit. I reached back, and pulled out a cicada. I thought it was dead, but after a minute, I saw one of its feet moving. For some reason, it had been stunned. George, as I named him, had messed up his (her?) wings, but seemed to enjoy crawling on my arm and falling off. Unfortunately, poor George/Georgene later died because of his/her injuries.

Most people out in our area northwest of Chicago still haven't seen a cicada. I took George and the other one into the Legion and showed them around to great interest. When I told Chopper how I had come by George, he joked that George must have been trying to mate with me. I replied that that would be ONE VERY UGLY BUG.

I Have Seen the Cicadas. --RoadDog

THIS DAY IN HISTORY- 1856- The First Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia nominated frontier hero, John C. Fremont as their presidential candidate. The GOP had only started in Ripon, Wi., two years earlier. I figure some of my mostly-Republican family would find this of interest. We all know who they nominate in 1860.