nch breaks and falls to the ground."Few disagree with the opinion that the skins shed by cicadas aboveground are an unsightly form of natural litter. A book by Peter Farb called Insects speaks disapprovingly of the "junk yard of skins" shed by a swarm of cicadas in an Indiana orchard in 1953. Jane E. Brody describes a time in the Northeast in 1970 when passersby had to "skip like schoolchildren' to avoid crunching the piles of cicada bodies beneath their feet. This litter is added to by birds who eat the cicadas, spitting out their wings in the process. For people with sidewalks to sweep and yards to clean, such animal remains can be a real nuisance. This is especially true in thecase of cicadas, as 20,000 to 40,000 can appear beneath a single tree.As cicada invaders appear, they are also likely to leave their traces in lawns, flower beds, and fields. Cicada nymphs burrowing out of the soil in search of a tree can leave a hole as large as one-half inch across. Such honeycombing of the soil can be very dismaying to those who take pride in a well-kept lawn. During a 1987 appearance of cicadas in the Washington, D.C., area, the United States Agricultural Research Service was plagued by telephone calls from distraught people who wanted to know why their lawns suddenly had holes.Of all the phenomena related to cicadas, their song, or-as some call it-their racket, has aroused the most comment. Attached to the underside of a cicada's abdomen is a pair of large drumheads. These drumheads are operated by powerful muscles that set them vibrating. The loud, shrill sound produced has been compared to the creaking of an unoiled door hinge, a jet about to land, or the sound of a car motor about to break down. Of course, the cicada sound with which humans are familiar is actually made by thousands of cicadas singing together, and it has a hypnotic, droning effect.Only male cicadas are equipped to sing. The noise attracts females, who eventually mate w...
