Every seventeen years up from the ground emerge the Magicicada. We like to call them the 17 year locust. Here in Southwestern PA, the Brood V cicada wreaks six weeks of havoc during the mating and egg laying portion of their long bug lives. It is Nature’s order of things that is so fascinating. Why have a bug live underground seventeen years? And, why are there so many? And so loud? There has to be a reason.
This orderly ritual is of such magnitude that it sticks in your memory. From childhood, to young adulthood, through middle age you remember not only the last time the cicada were here but your earliest recollection of their visits. The the stories start to flow. “They were so loud you couldn’t hear the ball game” or “They covered everything, like a plague” or how Binky our cat ate so many she threw up.
While most of us, at least in my age group, will think that the ringing in our ears is much louder than normal, it is nature’s orderliness reminding us that the world is at the same time a wondrously big and little place where things are always happening in an orderly way.
My Second Act, Scene One 