6/21/13: Friday, June 21: The Big Day for Cicadas and the Summer Solstice!! I got away from the hotel before noon, at least, and stayed in town long enough to get a prescription filled at a local Rite Aid and then to see some cicadas, following the instructions of Terri [sic?] at the hotel's front desk.

   This is a very special cicada event, the hatching of the 17-year cicadas, and these dudes have truly not been seen or heard from for 17 years. They've been underground in larval form, eating and growing, for 17 years. Suddenly they realize they are hormone-crazed adolescents, dig themselves out, fly around and find mates, lay their eggs, and then die. The aboveground lives of the whole hatch is only a couple of months, and then they are gone for another 17 years.

   They are fairly large bugs, the body brown and about an inch long and quite rotund, the wings large and of a transparent brown tint. I didn't see but certainly heard live cicadas at Terri's site, but having scrambled up a very steep little slope, I found dozens upon dozens of their transparent brown first molts clinging to the trees and leaves. The chirping of the live ones could be heard easily in spite of the traffic! I called Terri to thank her.

   For an event so rare, I figured the risk of poison ivy was worth it. No one yet knows why some cicadas are periodic like this. It certainly doesn't help them escape predators, as there are fungi and wasps attuned to their cycles and which prey on them.

   "Thanks" to a massive, hours-long traffic jam on I84 that extended through New York from the Taconic Bridge to the Hamilton Fish Newburgh Beacon Bridge [sic?], a jam I was part of, I got to hear cicadas chirping loudly enough to be heard over the crowd of idling cars and big trucks around me, and I also got to see the cicadas flying. So I got to see the live adults in action!

   If these cicadas are behaving according to Wikipedia, they are the East Coast brood that last emerged in 1996 and after this hatch won't be seen again until 2030. Periodic cicadas occur in broods local to particular regions, and each brood has its own schedule. Also, there are periodic cicadas with shorter cycles (e.g., 13 years), but apparently none longer than 17 years. Some cicadas are annual. It looks as if none occur west of a certain line that probably represents enough trees and moisture for them.

   So here I am, at last, back in Lancaster, PA. Medifast, here I come!