We Welcome Our Alien Overlords
by Carrie Frye
The ground has boiled up with cicadas: Brood XIV, which comes out in Asheville every 17 years. I’ve been here for two other emergences—1991 and 2008—but I don’t remember ever feeling so fond of these bugs. They’re all over the place: red-eyed, fat, and thumb-like, with glassy wings and steampunk legs, a multitudinous, boffo, alien civilization that has taken over the neighborhood for now and will disappear in another week or two. They sit inscrutable atop leaf piles. Appear conjoined on the road, boinking like mad. Wheel through the air in dizzy circles. Hang from leaves, telephone poles, mailboxes, car tires.
But most of all they sing. The singing begins around nine in the morning and gets louder and louder as the sun warms up—until by afternoon it sounds like an alien spacecraft is hovering over the neighborhood: Wee-ow, wee-ow, wee-ow. It’s the males that sing. (Kelly Oten, an NC State forestry professor noted their buzzing “can reach over 100 decibels.”) The sound reaches its apex around 2:00 p.m., then ebbs back down till sunset. The air feels empty when it goes away.
Keep us breathing fire!
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