Reflecting on the Sun City cicada summer

The Chinese insist that 2024 is the Year of the Wood Dragon, but if you’re an Illinoisan, you know that 2024 is the summer of the cicada.

Still, if you’re a Sun City Illinoisan who was looking forward to getting reacquainted with those long-awaited love-bugs, this year of the dragon has been a bit of a drag, because there hasn’t been a cicada in sight in our part of the world.

And I guess that should come as no surprise, because they weren’t here in Sun City 17 years ago, either. Trust me, I know. I was here, and I was disappointed then, too.

And that should have come as no surprise either, because 17 years ago Sun City was a new community just rising from the corn fields. The only trees in this landscape were young new-planted saplings struggling to outgrow shrubhood.

Those trees are mature now, but they have had not a single cicada sap-sucker nursing on their roots for all these years, because 17 years ago there were no mature trees for the previous generation of cicadas to lay their eggs on. Although there are vast forests of old hardwoods not far away along the Fox river, cicadas just learning to fly are not long-haulers. The only long-haulers in the newborn Sun City 17 years ago were recent retiree snowbirds longing for Arizona or Florida.

And so, this Sun City summer, as in the Sun City summer of 17 years ago, June came and went cicada-free.

But for those of us who grew up in old-growth communities with memories of cicadas of long ago—for me it was Elmwood Park, with its arching elm trees—we missed meeting them once again this summer.

And because I knew this was probably my last time to see them again, I wanted to do whatever it took to be reacquainted with them. Fortunately, cicada-rich Woodstock is only a few minutes’ drive away, and I like to spend time in Woodstock anyway, so I visited Woodstock at least once a week all through June for farmers markets, and each time I made a point to visit the cicadas.

Way back in April I wrote that each time the cicadas came to visit during my lifetime — four times before this year — at least one cicada has somehow found its way into my mouth. I knew that I would probably keep up the tradition this year, and I did. I munched one while sitting in the Woodstock square listening to music at the farmers market there. This one was newly hatched and raw, its wings just blossoming with an amber blond hue.

I was a bit amazed that my cicada tartare had no taste at all, because I seemed to remember earlier cicadas as having an earthy vegetative flavor. But this one was so young and tender, it was almost flavorless. Or maybe my taste buds have just aged beyond the cicada-detection zone. I blame the Tabasco on my morning eggs.

I envied Woodstock for its cicada abundance, especially having just come that morning from my Sun City cicada scarcity. But because I’m not sure if it’s legal to transport insects from one village to another, I may or may not have carried home several dozens of those loveable bugs from Woodstock and released them to the oak trees on the ridge right behind my Sun City house.

If it is illegal to do that, there will no proof that I may or may not have done it until 17 years from now, when a new generation of cicadas might or might not pop up right behind my address, and no place else in all of Sun City. But if I’m still around then and The Man nabs me for what I may or may not have done, I’ll probably be glad to be housed in a little room with three square meals delivered to me each day, courtesy of the government.

I was talking with my son on Father’s Day, reminiscing about our earlier experiences with cicadas, but I was hesitant to tell him that I may or may not have transported cicadas from Woodstock to Huntley. Let’s call it “plausible deniability” if the screws come knocking on doors looking to build a case against me. I wouldn’t want for him to be put in an awkward “What did you know and when did you know it” testimony situation.

He lives in a community that allows residents to own chickens, and we were sitting around the barbecue, watching his hens peck at whatever they could find in the grass. “Here,” he said, “check this out.”

He went into the garage and came out with a cardboard box that buzzed and bumbled as you held it, and when he opened it, dozens of cicadas tumbled out. Hundreds of them. The chickens greedily gobbled them up.

“We didn’t get very many of them here,” he said, “but because the robins and sparrows love them, I thought they’d be great for the hens to eat.”

“Where did you get all these?” I asked.

“Woodstock,” my son may or may not have said — because, you know, plausible deniability.

Contraband cicadas transported from one community to another?

You have to wonder, where do young people learn to get crazy ideas like that?

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com

---