Creature feature

The sound was terrifying, a screeching rattle that came out of nowhere when I opened the back door to let my dog in from a potty break. Simone stopped and listened as I broke out into a sweat and frantically waved her inside. That horrible screech rose, stopped, rose, stopped. Then a black bulletlike thing buzzed past my head and I swear I felt its wings brush the tip of one ear. I shrieked. Simone leaped and we both dove into the house.

Then we heard that nightmarish sound again. The thing was in the house with us, pinging off the kitchen walls, screeching, screeching, screeching. Finally, it smacked into the window and stopped. Peeking through my fingers, I saw that it was an insect, a green and brown monster cicada as big as a hummingbird.

Cicadas really aren’t anything to be afraid of, I was told later by Jeffrey Barnes, insect expert and curator of the Arkansas Arthropod Museum at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. They don’t attack or bite. In fact, the hellish sound that sent Simone and me diving for cover was the cicada’s warning signal. The thing was scared. I felt a little sorry for it after learning that.

I’m used to the high pitched song of cicadas en masse. It’s a sound of summer in Arkansas and is actually comforting. But the noise of one frightened cicada was so intense I felt like my eardrums were being ripped apart. Because I heard the screech at night, I didn’t connect it with cicadas, which typically sing during the heat of the day and in the early evening. That song, by the way, is the mating call of the males.

Barnes says the cicada I encountered, which really was only about 1 ½ inches long, was a “dog day” cicada, not to be confused with the “periodic” cicadas that appear every 17 years; they’re next due to emerge in Arkansas in 2015. The larger dog day cicadas, of which there are 14 to 15 species in Arkansas, have a three- to four-year life cycle so some are born here each year. These appear in late summer - the sultry dog days, which accounts for their common name. Scientifically speaking, they belong to the genus Tibicen.

About that cicada song or screech: The sound comes from a pair of tymbals, which are ridged membranes at the top of the abdomen (the center part of the insect’s body just below the head) covered by a flap. Internal muscles attached to the tymbals cause them tovibrate and those vibrations echo through the abdominal sac, which is hollow. Scientists believe the resonance of that empty sac is why the cicada song is so loud.

An entry on the Arkansas Arthropod Museum’s website (uark.edu/ua/arthmuse) has this to say about the sound that has scarred me for life: “Cicadas do not harm human beings, although a male can frighten a person who decides to handle it. The alarm sound it makes is loud and shocking.” No argument here. Loud and shocking it was, except my winged visitor wasn’t being handled when it first shrieked. The creature was several feet away and nothing appeared to be bothering it. Maybe it missed its mom.

We won’t be hearing the cicada song much longer, Barnes says. The dog day cicadas are about gone and the first frost will kill any lingerers.

As for my cicada, he lived to sing another day. My fiance bravely captured him, then carried him - screeching all the way - to the kitchen door, where he was turned loose to fly, silently this time, into the darkness.

Do you have a question about pets? We’ll get you an answer from an authority. Send your question to Rhonda Owen, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 2221, Little Rock, Ark. 72203 or e-mail [email protected]

Family, Pages 34 on 09/25/2013

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