Rare cicada brood arrives in Lake Country

They don’t sting; they don’t bite; they don’t suck blood, and they won’t make you itch. And yes, your garden is safe.

However, miniature exoskeletons might end up attached to your house. You might see flickers of red eyes and black bodies buzz by. 

Over the past weekend, you may already have heard their monotonous droning. Your ears might even ring from continuous buzzing that can periodically reach as high as 85 decibels.

They are part of the Great Southern Brood XIX cicadas that reemerge every 13 years. And, despite some maps showing their arrival only in North Georgia – the cicadas are here. 

Yes, right here, in Lake Country.

“I just found my first cicada molt. Temperatures are almost at the critical point,” said Bruce Snyder, Georgia College & State University associate professor of biological and environmental sciences.

Cicadas stay beneath the ground as wingless nymphs; however, they are not hibernating, Snyder explained. They feed off sap in tree roots and tunnel about until the year is right. Then, they start burrowing up, waiting inside a hole near the surface of the ground for just the right temperature, a process he called “staging.” When soil eight inches deep reaches 64 degrees the 13-year cicadas come out.

That process began last weekend in Middle Georgia and will continue throughout this week and next. They’ll be around only for about a month.

Considering a relatively wet and chilly spring, Snyder said he didn’t expect the cicadas until early May. Pollen and blooms were a week late, too, but then, temperatures turned warm. 

A few “stragglers” come out early, he said, but most crawl out around the same time. They shed their exoskeletons and noisily look for mates. They don’t eat much. They just group in trees in a loud chorus for one big reproductive party.

“They have been staging underground for weeks,” Snyder said. “Based on the weather, I expect to see them coming up now in larger numbers.

“But I wouldn’t be worried about cicadas,” he added. “They’re harmless. They have no interest in you. You just happen to be in their space.”

The Great Southern Brood is thought to be the largest geographically of all periodical cicadas – typically seen along the coast from Maryland to Georgia and in parts of the Midwest.

Significantly, the arrival of the 13-year Southern Brood coincides for the first time since 1803 with the appearance of the 17-year Northern Illinois Brood XIII. 

That’s the year Thomas Jefferson became the third U.S. president, Beethoven composed his 2nd Symphony in D, the Napoleonic Wars began, and U.S. writer Ralph Waldo Emerson was born.

According to entomologist and collections manager Floyd W. Shockley at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, this marks a once-every-221-year occurrence.

“Nobody alive today will see it happen again,” he pointed out. “That’s rather humbling.”

Snyder agreed this dual emergence is a “rare opportunity,” and pointed out, “to have one happen where you’re living is a good opportunity to learn. It’s something people shouldn’t miss.”

However, he cautioned people not to confuse the periodical version with common cicadas that show up every year in mid-summer. Those are brownish-green and bigger, about 2 to 3 inches long, and appear in far fewer numbers.

Periodical cicadas are only about 1.5 inches long, but when they do arrive it’s in the hundreds of millions. This year, between the Southern and Northern broods, up to a trillion periodical cicadas are expected to emerge, which, if somehow laid end-to-end, the line would extend more than 15.7 million miles, which equals about 33 trips to the moon and back.

Also significant, Shockley said, is the possibility of interbreeding along the narrow band in northern Illinois where the two cicada broods will overlap, fostering the possibility of a unique new brood being created and set to a new cycle.

“This is an extremely rare event,” he repeated.

So, enjoy the cicadas. They’re here for only a short time. They’ll mate, lay their eggs, and once more disappear – for another 13 years.