Published: May 07, 2008 10:52 pm         

Has it really been 17 years?

Cicadas set to return to region

To some, it’s an arcane reminder of a biblical plague of locusts swarming in ancient Egypt as a means of leverage for the eventual liberation of Hebrews from the oppressive hand of a pharaoh.

With good reason, some folks hear the stifling drone and assume, wrongly, that locusts have returned.

Actually, the constant hum that sounds like “f-a-r-o, f-a-r-o” is coming from the latest generation of cicadas, not locusts.

Within a week or so, you will hear them once more in southern and southwestern counties, even Raleigh and possibly on the edge of Fayette.

“A true locust is a type of grasshopper,” says Barry Crutchfield, a plant and insect biologist with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.

“And with most of your grasshoppers, their wings are colored in some fashion. They have pigmentation in the wings, whereas a cicada has clear wings, although its veins are kind of orange-ish in color. But they’re clear wings, a membranous wing.”

When one hears the unmistakable of “f-a-r-o” echoing across a forest, the noise is that of the male engaged in the mating call.

“They have different calls,” Crutchfield said.

Yet, the most common one is the chant that takes listeners back to the days of Moses as symbolic of one of the 10 plagues in the exodus of his people.

For all their bellowing, however, the cicada cannot bite, sting or otherwise harm animals or humans, but it can prove fatal to some smaller trees when eggs deposited for the next generation.

In this region, that comes in 2025, meaning the nymphs must burrow underground for 161⁄2 years before rising to the surface.

By mid-May, expect the cicada to strike up his chorus in the woods of Boone, McDowell, Wyoming, Mingo, Logan, Lincoln, Wayne and Cabell counties, along with portions of Putnam, Kanawha, Mason and Raleigh, and possibly on the western tip of Fayette.

Actually, there are seven distinct broods that appear across West Virginia at varying intervals, each one assigned a Roman numeral for distinction.

This year’s return is XIV, and hundreds of thousands of the cicadas will be fanning out for a brief life span above the earth.

“They do have an annoying sound,” Crutchfield says. “They sing all day long. They’re only out about four to six weeks. So you’re talking about four to six weeks of this constant singing, or noise, all day long. They can get quite annoying, I guess.”

Other than the din generated, the cicada is harmless, except for some damage to trees.

“Females select pencil-sized branches and she cuts slits in those branches and lays eggs in the slits,” Crutchfield explained.

“It’s normally about 6 to 10 inches from the tip. That causes the branch to die out to the tip. It kind of hangs and breaks there. They call that ‘flagging.’ It’s going to look bad, but it’s not going to affect the overall health of the three. On a small tree, that could disfigure the tree and be severe damage to the tree. They can be harmful to small, woody trees. But other than that, the damage is cosmetic.”

Once this generation of chanting cicadas expires, the process starts anew, and in 17 years, the insect will be born again.

“Eggs hatch and the nymphs drop to the ground,” Crutchfield elaborated.

“They drop out of the branch. They fall to the ground and burrow into the soil. They feed on the roots of that tree for 161⁄2 years. They have a very long life, compared to most insects, which live a very short period of time.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com