May 23, 2004
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Spooky Cicadas
I'm listening to this year's bumper crop of Magicada. They sound like B-Movie UFO's, enough to jar the addled brain.
The males’ love songs have been likened (to human ears) to buzz saws, small jet planes, and to a “high winding trill.” The quote is from a song, Day of the Locusts, that Bob Dylan wrote in 1970 after attending Princeton’s Commencement to receive an honorary degree and when he was serenaded by the song of the Magicicada. [Note: cicadas are not locusts!]Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at May 23, 2004 9:58 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links
Ironically enough, Bob Dylan's "singing" has been likened (to human ears) to buzz saws, small jet planes, and a bass speaker whose driver element has been eaten by Magicicada...
Myria
For those who are not lucky enough to have billions of bugs around their house, I have a few seconds of the sound here - if that doesn't work, click on my name, scroll down to a moment of zen....
Not to sound to geeky, but they sound like the phaser from the original Star Trek. Except, the phaser is defective and never turns off.
I attended a commencement in VA on Sat and the cicada sound was amazing and constant throughout the ceremony.
Someone there told me that recordings of the cicada sound were used as the sound made by the Martian death ray in the War of the Worlds film made sometime in the 50's.
That rung true because I remember the film and particularly that menacing sound.
Can anyone confirm this piece of trivia?
Mike M
I'd been seeing a lot of emergence holes on my property for a couple of weeks but no bugs. Then on Friday they all started appearing. It's a very eerie sound, just like Star Trek phasers mentioned above.
I seem to hear cicadas more during the day, because the crickets and other insects drown them out at night.
If ANYTHING is drowning out the cicadas, you must not have very many of them.
Actually, the 17-year locusts are kind enough not to sing during the night. This is probably why you aren't hearing them after sundown.
I've always thought that the cicadas sound like alien space ships; please let me know if you get that story confirmed, Mr. McGarrity!
It all depends on what you mean by night, JB. Here on the outskirts of Baltimore, they were buzzing away at 4:30 AM.
Dr. Weevil - so when is sunrise in Baltimore? If the sky is getting light at 4:30 am, then that's the beginning of daytime to critters that live outside.
If you can find the tree from whence a bothersome bug is strumming, sometimes a good sharp whack on the trunk -- a rubber mallet or lawn croquet implement works well enough without gouging the tree -- will silence Romeo's philandering for a while.
They're not significantly worse than the adult males of the homo sapien species, though, which have been known to make far less intelligent and/or more irritating noises in the presence of a stunning female specimen.
Actually, last night I did see what looked like a 17-year calling out to its lady friends, but it was sitting right next to my outside light.
That's so funny about War of the Worlds. I was just commenting to my wife how the Cicadas sounded just like the thrumming of the Martian spaceships. I guess it's no coincidence after all.
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