One of the great mysteries of nature

Even as you read those words, the scary monsters are getting closer.

It won’t be long before many of us face big red eyes, strong wings and rounded cheeks, which, at 90 decibels, can be taller than an approaching underground train.

Yes, if the past is evidence, the 17 – year – old cicadas will return to your neighborhood in late April or early May. Whether you live anywhere on the east or middle of the East Coast, or even as far west as Illinois or as far south as Georgia.

Readers in these areas under the age of 20 may not remember the last scene of “Brood X,” but these youngsters are in for a treat.

Literally trillions (and “literally” used here, well, literally) of the giant insects emerge mostly from the ground, where they have been spending their time for more than a decade and a half, living as nymphs of the species (Magicicada septendecim, if you know for sure), feeding themselves with the root sap of the trees in which their mothers long planted them back in 2004.

They are terrifying creatures, both because of their size (a good two inches long with giant girths), wide orange stripes and those bright red eyes. But they are harmless to humans, except those with bug phobia, which can get through when the big insects come in contact with them. They (the lice, that is) tend to be clumsy flies and often bump into insecure people and just other things.

Dogs and cats love to play with the unprotected cicadas (much to the chagrin of the latters), and birds consider them a gourmet food (even more annoying to the lice).

For us humans, however, the attack, which lasts only a few weeks (but can be like months), should be a source not for fun or nutrition, but a surprise.

We understand, that is, that for the accumulation of modern scientific knowledge, even some prosaic objects are still beyond grasp. Because the massive unified appearance of cicadas every 17 years remains one of nature’s great mysteries. “No one knows what method they will use to trigger their major crisis,” said Howard Russell, an entomologist at Michigan State University.

He further explains that the lice are so sensitive that they will even, together, put the emergency on for a day or two if the temperature is right but the weather is wet.

When maidens of science talk about the unknown, they tend to focus on things like the nature of time, the limits of space, the strangeness of quantum physics, the mysteries of dark matter and black holes and alien creatures. other.

But we are surrounded by countless mysteries that we may not pay enough attention to.

Like insects that are known in some way when 17 years have passed and it is time for them to come out of the ground to lay eggs in branches. Coming in weeks later, with tiny nymphs falling to the ground, digging in and starting a new 17-year wait.

In fact, everything we call nature is miraculous, and our removal from the many miracles around us is simply the result of their constant exposure. We get used to surprises so we don’t always surprise them all. At least until something we haven’t seen for a while – say, 17 years or so – suddenly strikes us.

“If the stars should appear,” wrote philosopher and essayist Ralph Ralpho Emerson, just “one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and confess; and keep a memorial for many generations of the city of God revealed! But every night that beauty of beauty comes out and lights up the world with their beautiful smile. “

Admonished we should be well off if we don’t appreciate the wonder of the night sky or everything else here on earth that we tend to take for granted.

And some red-eyed germs, perhaps not entirely “envoys of beauty” but striking their own way, are reminiscent of the equally amazing things that always surround us.

This article first appeared in Ami Magazine.