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A year ago, I put out the welcome mat for periodical cicadas to hang out in my yard. They emerged from the soil in biblical numbers and climbed into nearby trees and shrubs. From the first early birds to the last slowpoke, their time on earth spanned about a month. They were loud and not at all discreet about their love affairs. Having carried out their destiny, they died, leaving offspring to burrow back into the depths from where they'd come and to emerge more than a decade later as teenagers eager to get their wings.

This year, a group of Eastern states gets to experience the wonder of periodical cicadas. Brood XIV is underway in Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. New Jersey is also expected to experience the emergence. A few states could also see what are called "stragglers" from previous broods.

Brood XIV is on the 17-year plan. The last time it saw daylight was in 2008. But according to scientists who map and study cicadas, it was the Pilgrims who first recorded these insects in May 1634 at Plymouth Colony. What we now know as cicadas were predictable historical events.

In 2024, I was fortunate enough to experience both Broods XIII (17-year) and XIX (13-year) in Illinois in what was the equivalent of a cicada apocalypse as the two broods emerged simultaneously. To put that into perspective, the last time those events overlapped, Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States.

Not to be morbid, but when one gets to a certain age, things that happen in long intervals bring up natural questions. How many more times might I see this in my lifetime?

Every day brought a new excitement to my garden and surrounding grounds. The nymphs emerged from their underground tunnels and climbed to an upright object (usually a tree). They anchored themselves to a surface to undergo transformation. As the immature cicada splits its nymphal skin, the adult slowly starts to pull itself out and wriggle free, leaving behind its outer shell. The newly emerged adults are cream color with black patches behind their eyes that bestow a comical look of having Groucho Marx-like eyebrows. Finally, the adult exoskeleton darkens and hardens to black with red eyes and orange-veined wings.

Not everyone finds insect life cycles fascinating. I watched neighbors try to mow down the perceived monsters. I saw people gleefully stomping on them in parking lots. Cicadas are loud, but the human complaints were often deafening.

I, on the other hand, bought a cicada T-shirt and refused to mow the yard where they emerged en masse. I took endless pictures and posted them liberally enough on social media to receive some nasty notes from the haters. The only part of the process I didn't enjoy was the rotten meat smell that results when the adult cicadas die.

Perhaps my patience and fortitude came from the knowledge that these insects aren't pests. I periodically check in with cicada researcher Gene Kritsky, professor emeritus of biology and the former dean of the School of Behavioral and Natural Sciences at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Kritsky's latest book, The Pilgrims' Promise: The 2025 Emergence of Periodical Cicada Brood XIV, discusses the natural history, evolution, behavior and distribution of periodical cicadas and provides a detailed survey of the history of Brood XIV from 1634 to 2025.

Kritsky assures me that cicadas don't chew agricultural field crops. Female cicadas do lay their eggs in the ends of tree branches or other woody materials, which occasionally causes the leaves at the end of the branch to die in a process called "flagging."

"There is a slight risk of damage to very young trees," said Kritsky. He recommends waiting to plant trees of 5 feet or under until the cicada event has subsided. Small trees can also be netted. Orchards and vineyards may need to take special precautions to avoid flagging if cicada emergence is concentrated.

"For the most part, there's little other risk with this insect," he added. "In fact, in 1869, a number of farmers reported greater yields in their orchards the year following flagging. The egg laying turned out to provide a natural pruning that resulted in greater fruit production," Kritsky said.

I did have small trees on my property that were flagged to the point that I wondered about survival. They did recover this spring, but then, I do not depend on them for income.

Keep in mind that because cicadas are appearing in your state or area doesn't mean you'll be blessed when them on your property. Cicada populations will vary depending on whether they existed there before. Clearing trees for development removes their food source. Cicada movement is mostly localized and for mating purposes.

Soil aeration, fertilizer (from decaying cicada carcasses), food for birds and tree pruning are generally given as the positives for these winged wonders.

The easiest way to identify periodical cicadas is to look for the big red eyes. There are annual cicadas or non-periodical cicadas that are large, greenish in color and found throughout the United States in the summer.

Kritsky encourages farmers to lend a hand in a citizen-science effort to map the emergence. Pitching in to help is as easy as downloading a free app called Cicada Safari from Apple or Google Play. Find it here: https://www.cicadasafari.org/….

Here are five fun facts from Cicada Safari:

-- Only the male cicadas sing. They have sound-producing structures called tymbals on either side of the abdomen.

-- Cicada gender is easy to determine. The female's abdomen will have a groove in which is found the ovipositor. The male's abdomen will terminate with a square-shaped flap.

-- Adult cicadas do not eat solid food but do drink fluids to avoid dehydration.

-- Adult cicadas do not sting or bite humans, and they do not carry diseases. But they can harm young trees when female cicadas lay their eggs in the tree's new growth. It is not recommended that you spray pesticides to kill the cicadas, because they fly into a tree to lay their eggs and spraying will not kill these incoming cicadas. If you have a young tree, you can loosely wrap the branches with cheesecloth to keep the female from laying her eggs.

-- Periodical cicadas are often incorrectly called locusts. Locusts are grasshoppers and cicadas are more closely related to aphids than grasshoppers.

Find a list of commonly asked questions here: https://cicadas.uconn.edu/…

Find a map where Brood XIV has emerged here:

https://cicadamap.msj.edu/… and https://cicadas.uconn.edu/…

Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com

Follow her on social platform X @PamSmithDTN

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