Cicadas everywhere

They really are everywhere, or so it seems. In the Asheville area, the constant trill is almost mind numbing, especially around noon.
We are experiencing a phenomenon that has had people in awe for hundreds (and probably thousands) of years. The old folks, and here I mean the people who were my grandparents' age when I was growing up, called them Locusts, and said that they were the locusts of the Bible that plagued Pharaoh, when Moses was asking him to release the Jews (Children of Israel). They did not know, due to the insularity of the Mountains, that a locust is a different creature altogether; a grasshopper.
These creatures have an extraordinary life, one that extends for 17 (or 13 in some cases) years underground, and emerge all at once in a horde that totally swamps any predators, allowing most of them to feed (some say they do feed), mate, and deposit eggs in relative peace.
What makes them so terribly special to me, and almost magical (indeed, their Genus is Magicicada), is this hidden life, and I have always celebrated the emergence as a special event. I know that some folks do not (including my wife Suzanne), but I rejoice in them.
They are in all the trees here, and can be seen flitting around from tree to tree. I have heard two different songs, the "Pharaoh" trill of the species M. septendecim, and the odd ratcheting sound of what was likely a M. cassini.

My first experience of these insects was when I was 6 years old, in 1957, as I wrote in a previous post. I was unable to handle them then, as the old folks said they were "poisonous". In 1974, I handled them, and photographed them, and again in 1991. I am playing with them this year too, and even brought one in the house, and photographed it emerging, a pretty little male. You can see him in his white coloration before he turned to the orange color of full adulthood.

I am glad to have seen this emergence, and this is likely to be my last or next to last of this brood number 14 (XIV), as I am 57 years old, and have a dissected aorta. (Uh oh! ) However, I might see another in 17 years, if I am a good boy!

Enjoy, and come see them before they are gone, and the babies take another 17 years!