May 30, 2016 3 min read

It started with one or two shells on my back porch, the evidence this is a cicada year.

One morning, I awoke to the sight of a couple of the little brown forms sticking to the pole that holds my dinner bell and I almost believed those were all I would get. After all, I had been seeing videos online for days of the places – pretty local places, in fact – swamped with them.

But, the next morning, there were several hundred clinging to the two trees near my house and dozens more in the grass surrounding it. Not too bad, I thought. I can handle that many, I thought.

I wondered if my chickens would eat them so I decided to gather a few for them to try. I put on a hooded sweatshirt and headed outside. With my hand pulled up inside of my sleeve, I swatted them off of the tree and the grass and into a bucket. As the number of them in the bucket increased, so did the feeling there were some crawling on my back. I put my hood up to protect the exposed skin of my neck.

My paranoia increased as more went to the bucket. I was certain they were going to get into the hood from the front. So I cinched the drawstring and tied it tight. When my husband poked his head out the back door, he laughed and said I looked like I was cleaning up a HazMat spill somewhere.

But the chickens loved them. Especially the freeloader we call Sally, who just lives out her days without contributing even a single egg in exchange for her room and board. She didn’t even hew the cicadas, and could toss back one every two seconds. (Yes, I counted.) In about a tenth of the time it took me to gather the bugs, they were gone and the chickens were looking for more.

Still, I figured I had seen the worst of the bugs and wondered if there would be enough to give any to the girls the next day.

Never mind. No need to fear, my dear! The 17-year cicadas are here!

The morning after I gathered the bugs by hand, I was able to sweep the chickens’ meal-worth into a dust pan with a broom in about 30 seconds. And the morning following that, I was able to fill a five-gallon bucket in under a minute by using a rake in my grass.

By Sunday, there were so many piled up beneath the tree, the bugs were inches thick on the ground. More were falling from the tree every second. I can honestly say I finally believe they are coming. I certainly have my fair share of them, and I don’t much like them. They give me the heebie-jeebies.

I read in this very paper the other day that some people are adventurous enough to add the creepy crawlies to their food pyramid. Not me. I can’t get past the soft, scrapey sound of their wings when they crawl over one another.

But if you consider my cicada-powered egg producers, in a round about way, I’m eating them too. I’m just staying a little bit farther up the food chain.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.