Wednesday, June 10, 1998

Very latest sound from Nashville

By Bob Greene

NASHVILLE -- Imagine this, if you will:

You're walking around Nashville on a fine, sunny day; you have arrived just hours earlier. All of a sudden you feel something going on inside your shirt.

You think -- you hope -- it's just your mind playing tricks. But as two or three seconds pass, and the creeping, crawling sensation intensifies, you stop what you're doing, open a button or two, and take a look.

And what you see is the ugliest, darkest, weirdest, jumbo-sized, double-winged, six-legged, red-eyed insect you could possibly imagine, crawling slowly across your chest.

What would you do?

I can tell you what your loyal correspondent did:

Let out a shout, ripped off his shirt, threw it to the ground, batted the burrowing bug off his chest -- and watched another of the things stroll casually from his shirtsleeve.

An isolated incident?

Nope.

Because it's not taking place in Washington or New York or Los Angeles, the invasion of the 13-year cicadas is receiving virtually no mention in the national news.

The cicada invasion is occurring here in Middle Tennessee -- just as it occurred at precisely this time of the year in 1985. It's about as disgusting as disgusting can be.

It's not dangerous; it's not painful. It's just as obnoxious a turn of nature as you can possibly envision -- and there's not a thing anyone can do about it.

They are everywhere -- swarming, flying, crawling, dive-bombing. There are millions upon millions of them -- you can't avoid them. They make the phrase "quality of life" a joke.

And it's all about having sex.

The bugs, that is. The cicada invasion is based on one thing -- the bugs having nonstop sex.

Thirteen years ago the unformed cicada nymphs burrowed into holes in the Tennessee ground. And began to suck on plant and root juices and to wait patiently.

Now, exactly 13 years later, as if they have been watching the calendar, they have crawled out.

They -- masses of them -- attach themselves to trees (or the walls of houses), shed their skins, and -- within about 90 minutes -- transform themselves into dark, hard, hideous-looking creatures with double wings and bulging eyes.

And they fly away in search of sex -- so all of this can start again.

The males will gather together in huge, loathsome groups and sing in an ear-splitting, screeching chorus that is intended to attract females. It works -- the female cicadas rush to the noise, and the sex begins.

(In case you don't believe this, the Nashville Tennessean has taped the sound of the cicadas' screaming chorus and has set up a telephone line for people who want to listen. This would seem not to make a whole lot of sense in Nashville -- you would think the last thing in the world citizens here would want to listen to is more cicadas -- but if you live out of town and want to be repulsed, the number is 615-242-2424, extension 1015.)

During the day the cicadas fly around, land on people, leave their nauseating-looking carcasses on driveways and sidewalks, and generally make life foul.

No one knows just how many of them there are, but scientific experts say that as many as 20,000 to 40,000 cicadas have been known to emerge from the ground beneath a single large tree.

To add to the putridness of this experience, the cicadas often mistake the sound of lawnmowers or of other engines for the sounds of their cicada brethren singing -- and swoop down on those engines (and the people around them) as if the engines were doorways to some nonstop cicada sex orgy. Motorists who have popped open the hoods of their cars have been greeted by a sight on the surfaces of their engines that ...

Well, you don't want to read about it.

Not that you've wanted to read this far anyway. I know, I know -- it's making you sick.

But that's just from hearing about it second-hand. Think of the people who have to live through it. The invasion of the 13-year cicadas lasts only about six weeks, and then they're gone. But the six weeks, according to people who have been through it before, can seem like six centuries.

I'd like to tell you more about this.

But I'm getting the first flight out of town.

And leaving my shirt behind.

Chicago Tribune