For me, 1987 will always be the Year of the Cicada. They were everywhere that summer.
Local FM radio constantly played the jingle, “Snappy Cicada Pizza”. This was a parody of the jingle for “Snappy Tomato Pizza”, and the sort of thing prone to tickle my quirky sense of humor, both then and now.
I was 19 years old in the summer of 1987, and that was my first experience with a cicada outbreak. That summer I was taking courses at the University of Cincinnati. I remember seeing them clinging to the trees on campus. Cicadas don’t live long; and soon their desiccated husks were everywhere.
In the intervening years, I’ve experienced perhaps four or five more major cicada broods. I’m not sure. Novelty, as they say, is a one-shot deal, and the novelty of cicadas has long since faded for me.
Nevertheless, I do notice them. Everyone does. During an outbreak, they are impossible to miss.
According to local news reports, the Indiana-Ohio-Kentucky tristate area will soon be swarmed with yet another brood. It appears, then, that 2025 will be yet another Year of the Cicada.
-ET