Cicadas

Listen, I have a story to tell you about cicadas. I do not know if you have them were you live, so I will describe them. They are large insects which live and mature underground, dormant for years, but when it is their time, they come up from the earth and find a rough surface to cling to and climb out of their hard shells, in which they had lived underground, and cling there for hours while their wings, unfolded from within the shell, dry. They are by nature fragile creatures, as when they are in the ground, they are helpless, and can barely move, and when out of their shell and drying, are defenseless. But they are beautiful creatures in a wide range of colors, bright green early in life, leading to brown and dusky grey before their deaths. I have always had an incredible fascination with them, since I was a small child, searching for their intricate little shells, clinging to the sides of oak trees and barns. When I was young I had a wooden box full of the shells, and even now if I find one, I save it. When the cicadas dry after leaving their shells they mate, and as part of that, they sing. They sing loudly, and this time of year in the south they can seem deafening. It seems there are millions in the trees, and it is beautiful. It almost makes up for the heat and humidity of the season.

Today, I set out from my home, near dusk, on my bicycle, on the route I usually take for exercise--about six or seven miles. I ride to a point, turn around and come home. When I leave I am listening contently to the cicadas, a song I have heard all my life, every year, though it seems less now than when I was a child, I simply enjoy it. Less than a mile from my house, riding down a city street, I hear helicopters, coming in low towards me. They wash away all other sounds with their engines, loud raucous things, and it feels I am in a war movie, about to be gunned down, but these are not military helicopters. They are city helicopters, and they are marked "mosquito control." You see, in the southeastern United States, in the summer, it is very hot and muggy. The temperature is often over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity is very high as well, and so mosquitoes breed prolifically. That's where the city's "mosquito control" comes in.

The helicopters fly very low over the houses and businesses, back and forth, and as they fly they spray pesticides, chemicals to kill the mosquitoes. In a fine mist they fall, on everything, including me, riding on the edge of the road. When you ride through the mist, it falls into your eyes, and it burns, and so I have to stop, nearly falling off my bike, my eyes watering, my nose running, the burning making it so I cannot see. I have to stop until the tears wash it away, and I can at least squint my way onward. It seems I am the only person out on the streets when they do this, and so it seems to bother no one else. After all, why should it? They are all locked up in their hermetically sealed, air conditioned homes, or driving their air conditioned vehicles.

But for me on my bike, I have to turn around, to head back home, and before I can make it there, the helicopters come over again, and why not? Almost every city and even most small towns in this part of the country have mosquito control, a crop-duster, or helicopter. Aircraft fuel is cheap, this I know from experience, and the cities' taxpayers are in complete support of these actions--after all, no one likes mosquitoes. Again I have to stop, and cry and rub my eyes, and wipe my nose until eventually, I can ride on, my eyes still watering.

When I get home, it is just now dark, and I am running inside to take a shower. I can feel the stickiness on my skin, can smell the chemical tang, and taste it in the back of my throat, but as I'm running inside to wash the burn from my eyes, to scrub my skin, I stop, and I listen, and I do not hear a single cicada singing.

Yes. Welcome to America, 21st century. Is it any different from the last, from the days of Silent Springs, and DDT? Does any one but me care?