Cicada sighting

It's the summer of the Cicada here in Chicago. The annual breeding year of the 17-year Cicada.

But, I've been asking myself, where are all the Cicadas that everyone has been talking about? I don't have any in my neighborhood.

I had my first encounter yesterday at work. I was sitting on a park bench outside the building and noticed one sitting next to me. Then I noticed a few on the edge of the building. And then I noticed more and more. Plus a faint buzz on the horizon. At last -- Cicadas!

I was visiting a friend in Wheaton last night, and I noticed that she doesn't have any in her neighborhood either, even through it's a long established neighborhood with a lot of trees. A co-worker in next-door Glen Ellyn has them, so I was really surprised that her neighborhood didn't have them. This made her laugh.

She said that she was in Downers Grove over the weekend and the buzz of Cicadas was so loud it was difficult to carry on a conversation. They were everywhere underfoot and buzzing around to the point that a few of the kids were shaking with disgust. "You know, in Wheaton, we don't get no plagues of locuts," my friend's high school-age son is reported to have told the Downers Grove crowd, tongue firmly in cheek, "We're good, god-fearing people."

(If you don't get the joke, follow this link to the Wheaton Wikipedia entry.)