Jun 4, 2016 4 min read

It didn’t take a psychiatrist to see the lady leaning on the handles of her mower was distraught.

As gently as I could, I inquired what was wrong with her.

“I can’t cut my grass,” she replied. “Those little black devils with the red eyes keep attacking me.”

Since the periodical cicada was emerging in large numbers, I figured that’s the creature that caused her commotion.

In some ways, one could hardly blame the lady for not liking this flying creature with its red-veined wings and even brighter red eyes. Not only is the cicada fearsome looking, it emerges in huge numbers, flying back and forth and occasionally running into a person.

I remember the last time they were out in the sunlight for the first time. Groundhog hunting was all but impossible as they would land on your head and the muzzle of the rifle.

I can’t help but ask where do they come from and are they really locusts?

They are not locusts, the locust is a grasshopper-type creature, gaining its fame in the Old Testament story of Moses.

The red-eyed critter emerging now is actually the cicada. There are always some cicadas around, one brood that hatches every 17 years and the other every 13 years.

Where were they before emerging? They found their way underground either 13 or 17 years ago and fed on the sap of tree roots.

This cicada emerges when soil temperatures reach a certain warmth.

Underground, they are not much bigger than an ant. The tiny nymph build tunnels out of mud a few weeks before emerging. They emerge in a hard-shell casing and attach themselves to something nearby. We all see the empty shells stuck on tree limbs and on the ground.

Next, they will breed and lay eggs in the twigs of the trees. The twig will then die, drop to the ground and the larvae in the twig will go into the ground to emerge 13 or 17 years from now.

I remember my late father telling me the cicada was actually nature’s tree pruner. What he said was right. The cicada does little harm to an adult tree and might in fact be good for it.

The exception to this might be the land owner trying to start an orchard by planting small seedlings. When starting a venture in tree growing, it might be smart to avoid planting the year before cicadas are due.

They are reliable and arrive when they are supposed to.

One question always seems to come up and that is do they sting or bite? The answer is a definite no.

The females do have an appendage that is used to split small twigs for egg laying but it is not used as a stinger. They have no defensive weapons.

Another benefit is many creatures on land, water and air eat them. Even dogs seem to relish the taste of cicadas. They, like other creatures, survive the many things eating them by reproducing in huge numbers.

Though they seem to stare at you with red eyes and you might get tired of the males constant buzz, which is his mating call, they are actually harmless.

• It was about this time a year ago when a neighbor called and told me they found an abandoned fawn along the road and brought it home with them. Now they were perplexed about what to do next.

My answer when they called me was curt but true. By picking up the fawn all they did was pronounce a death sentence on it.

Mommy was probably standing in the background watching the act of stupidity.

What can I do now was their next question? My answer was take it back where you found it and hope mommy is still there and will accept it.

Leave young animals alone. That poor mother is nearby 90 percent of the time and all you are is a kidnapper if you take the young.

George H. Block writes a Sunday Outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter.