Sultan: How much longer will the cicadas be here? (2024)

My walks with Frankie the dog have become far more perilous during the cicada invasion.

Hordes of these flying insects took over west St. Louis County. We became hostages to fat, sluggish, red-eyed bugs dive-bombing us the minute we stepped outside.

My introduction to the recent emergence of the periodical cicadas happened weeks ago when I walked outside early one morning to let Frankie out. A loud buzzing greeted us. The front porch was littered with insect carcasses — a confetti of wings and legs. The live ones lurked on my plants and covered each nearby tree.

This was going to be worse than expected, I thought. I quickly let Frankie take care of his business, grabbed the paper from the driveway and headed back inside. In the kitchen, I heard a strange whirring and clicking sound near my head. It was accompanied by a slight vibration.

As soon as I realized that a cicada had taken up residence in my hair, I let out a scream that should have startled my neighbors. Our children, home from college, didn’t stir from their bedrooms.

I started shrieking for my husband, who had tweaked his back over the weekend and was moving far more slowly than normal. My arms flailed while I jumped around. My husband hobbled down the stairs as fast as one can hobble.

“What’s wrong?!” he asked.

“It’s in my hair! Get it out!” I screamed. He managed to remove the bug stuck in my hair before I injured myself. This would be the first of several cicada-related outbursts.

One of these pests followed me into the car. Thankfully, I was still in the driveway when I heard that familiar high-pitched whine. That came from the bug — not from me. A friend confided that her husband had to pull over on the side of the road when she discovered — in a rather loud and agitated manner — a stowaway cicada in their car.

A gym instructor shared that she had started carrying a racquetball racquet while walking her dog and swinging it around to clear a path among the insects. Earlier this week, Frankie and I encountered a neighbor wearing a full beekeeping suit while walking her pup. Another neighbor carried a large black umbrella for protection. A friend sent a photo of herself in full protective gear — another bee suit — while tending to her garden.

These are the scenes from ground zero of the invasion in the St. Louis region. Imagine how we look out here in our suburban streets — waving racquets in the air while we walk on sidewalks, dressed in bee suits and carrying open umbrellas when there’s not a drop of rain falling from the sky nor a bee in sight.

The only thing more annoying than being unable to sit on your own patio on a clear sunny day is having to listen to people in other parts of the region remark on how they’ve barely crossed paths with a single cicada. We’re in a cicada circle of hell out here, people.

About a week and a half ago, I called Kayla Garcia, the zoological manager of invertebrates, out of desperation. How much longer will the cicadas be here and how much worse will it get, I asked her.

She said these periodicals can live anywhere from four to eight weeks and will likely be around until July. She also suggested that it would probably get worse before it gets better.

I didn’t care for how chipper she sounded sharing this devastating news, although she did acknowledge that there is an unfair distribution of the trillion or so bugs in our region. When I shared this prediction with my husband, he slumped in his chair and muttered an expletive.

In our futile war against nature, the cicadas were winning.

About a week later, another act of God struck our neck of the woods. A powerful storm tore through the area, dumping buckets of hail and blowing gusts of high-speed winds around us. I’m not one for doomsday predictions, but when there’s a possible tornado full of cicadas swirling nearby, the apocalypse feels nigh, indeed.

We survived the bizarre weather event.

The next day, I noticed the usual roar of the cicadas seemed a bit quieter.

Maybe the constant background noise had damaged my hearing, I thought. But when I walked Frankie that evening, we were dodging the insect missiles less frequently. (To his credit, Frankie shares my aversion to the cicadas and walks around their fallen comrades on the sidewalk.)

It wasn’t our imagination, though. Since the big storm, there are definitely fewer bugs clinging to our trees and hurling themselves at our faces and bodies.

Perhaps this is a temporary reprieve and the army of cicadas will arise in greater numbers once more.

It’s too early to claim victory, but the winds of change are brewing.