Weeks pass, and still the cicadas come, more and more, louder and louder. In my leafy suburban paradise, toward evening, the background whir revs up into a maddening whine, like nature’s insectoid buzzsaw ripping through the thin veneer of modern life.
The cicadapalooza coverage in the media has slowed, but too late: expectations were already raised.
“We were following the news,” said Conor O’Shea, landscape architect and father of two small boys, Kabir and Kieran. “We kept hearing about the cicadas coming to Chicago. We all decided to go to Smith Park to go cicada hunting.”
The West Town family visited the small green trapezoid and made a startling discovery.
“There were no cicadas,” said O’Shea.
Entomologists say there are not enough venerable trees in Chicago.
“We don’t have very many old trees in the city so they won’t be able to emerge if they have nowhere to live as nymphs,” Hazel Fricke, of the Field Museum’s insect department, told WBEZ.
So the family headed to west suburban Riverside. O’Shea sent a report to the Sun-Times describing what happened next.
“My sons collected shells, observed emergence holes, and brushed off cicada nymphs crawling up their legs,” he wrote. “This morning my son Kabir decided to cut out your article ‘Global Swarming’ and brought it to his school along with some of his shells to share with his classmates at Suder Magnet Montessori, a CPS school at Damen and Washington.”
Wonders ought to be fully investigated — cicadas are everywhere but where can you find a kid taking a newspaper to school? So I met with Kabir at his parents’ office on North Damen.
Kabir, 5, is in pre-K at Suder. He likes math, the 2016 film “Moana,” mac and cheese, bumblebees and the colors blue and yellow.
The boy said he didn’t know how he became interested in cicadas, though it seems a safe bet to suspect his father might have something to do with it. O’Shea’s company business card, which reads, “Hinterlands: Biodiverse landscape architecture,” features a cicada. He has been examining how to make insect deserts like Chicago more hospitable to an essential part of the chain of life.
“Four years ago I was starting to think about the cicadas and the way we manage the urban environment, we do it in ways that are not good for insects,” O’Shea said. “People should not cut their grass until cicadas are done, because the nymphs are emerging and vulnerable.”
Kabir said he saw 300 cicadas in Riverside, though he admitted, with a laugh, he didn’t count them. He wasn’t scared — he knows cicadas don’t bite.
“And they don’t sting, they only fly,” he elaborated. “And the nymphs are nocturnal. When they’re grown-ups, they’re not nocturnal anymore.”
A hard-bitten reporter knows when to challenge a subject flashing fancy terminology.
“And ‘nocturnal’ means ... ?” I demanded.
“They sleep in the morning and wake up in the night,” said Kabir. Obviously they’re doing something right at Suder Montessori, which is using the cicada invasion as a teaching moment.
“This is a great opportunity to spotlight students’ excitement about cicadas,” said principal Bosede Bada. “Their enthusiasm for these fascinating insects is contagious, and it’s wonderful to see them so engaged in discovering the wonders of nature.”
Kabir’s brother Kieran, 3 1/2, was not frightened by the cicadas. His mom, however ...
“I was scared,” admitted Aneesha Dharwadker, an architect. “I was deeply uncomfortable.”
“Because my mom doesn’t like bugs!” Kabir exclaimed, with the delight of a child expounding on a parent’s weakness. “Because when bugs go near her she gets the goosebumps. And when you’re standing up you just move back.”
Riverside was memorable for reasons beyond its bug population.
“There’s an ice cream shop there,” said Kabir, referring to London’s. “Me and my brother got ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.”
We strayed off topic — I started lauding Margie’s hot fudge — and Kabir, doing my job better than I, brought us back to the matter at hand.
“Can we talk about cicada shells?” he said, displaying bags of bounty. “These are my cicadas that I collected in Riverside and these ones are my brother’s that I collected for him.”
I invited Kabir to speculate on where he will be when the cicadas return in 2041.
“Where do you imagine you’ll be at 22?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, sensibly. I pressed him — pick anything.
His mother helpfully pointed out that he had expressed interest in being a doctor.
“A police officer,” Kabir corrected her. “I like to build stuff. I’m going to be a construction worker or a police officer and a doctor. I want to be everything.”
