We all know there are disappointments in life. Seems the cicada bust is going to be one of them.
Along with the 1969, 1984 and 1989 Cubs seasons, where the team missed World Series bids. Then, there was Super Bowl XLI in 2007, when the Bears lost to the Indianapolis Colts 29-17.
All disappointing outcomes, they were. While communities across Chicagoland celebrate the dual emergence of the 17-year and 13-year broods of the insects, there’s been a dearth of the crimson-eyed bugs in northern Lake County.
Which means we haven’t seen anywhere near the buggy numbers scientists predicted we’d be seeing during this idyllic cicadian summer. Nor hearing their hypnotic buzz.
“It’s like Y2K all over again,” one Gurnee resident exclaimed, as she searched in vain for the ugly bugs in her backyard. That statement reminded me of New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, 1999.
Remember, the year 2000 problem also went with the term Y2K Bug when, we were told, computers wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between 1900 and 2000. The machines would crash, and we were instructed to plan accordingly for the information apocalypse.
Instead of slurping California champagne to usher in the new century, many of us manned work computer screens waiting for data and dates to revert to 1900. What were we thinking? It turned into a cicada burger and nothing of consequence occurred.
The Y2K expectations also recalled the passing of Comet Kohoutek in late 1973. That’s when early cosmic predictions suggested that it had the potential to become one of the brightest comets earthlings in the 20th century would be able to see.
Indeed, the galactic visitor named for Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek was dubbed the “Comet of the Century.” It turned out to be but a starry dud. As did the opening of Al Capone’s vault on live television, which was a spectacular flop in 1986.
Billions of cicadas were predicted across the region this summer, as we’re now in mid-June and many of the insects have completed their mating duties. Last week, the ABC7 cicada-o-meter was in west suburban Lombard registering the ear-shattering sound — between 80 and 90 decibels — of male cicadas hoping to lure female cicadas for a quick liaison in nearby woodlands.
Entomologists told us we were going to be swimming in cicada carcasses after they performed their coupling ritual once the ground temperature reached 64 degrees. We’ve surely passed that mark. They were supposed to be like footballer Roy Kent from Ted Lasso: Here, there, everywhere.
Perhaps Lake County’s cicadas are just shy. It’s not that we didn’t plan for them.
The Lake County Forest Preserves Dunn Museum in Libertyville has a special exhibit celebrating what so far is a non-cicada emergence. It runs through Aug. 4, when the insects should be long gone.
T-shirts and hats with the eerie-looking bugs were stocked and available regionwide to welcome them. Walter E. Smithe Furniture, with one of its nine Illinois outlets in Vernon Hills, has been airing a clever cicada sale commercial “for your brood.” The Kane County Cougars are holding Cicada Night on Thursday at Northwestern Medicine Field in Geneva, when players will don jerseys and caps with cicada renderings on them.
The cicada onslaught this summer was to be a historic event. It was 1803 — when Thomas Jefferson, our third president, was in the White House — that the two broods came out from their dirt hiding places together. The 17-year brood last surfaced in Lake County in 2007.
There have been a few sightings and soundings of the insects, like in Ryerson Woods Forest Preserve in Riverwoods. In Lincolnshire along the Des Plaines River, thousands of cicadas were out and about last week. Or perhaps that was a bad case of tinnitus, that malady of ringing in the ears, for those driving on Route 22.
There also have been reports of the insects being loud and noisy in the south end of Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville, and spotty numbers in Old School Forest Preserve near Libertyville and in Middlefork Savanna Forest Preserve in Lake Forest.
There certainly are communities which have been replete with cicadas this season, leaving their exoskeletons behind once they emerged from their interment. Many of them in the west or near-west suburbs, like Wheaton, county seat of DuPage County, and Oak Brook. Just not here in the droves forecast.
Still to come, though, is the launch of our annual cicada brood, which normally occurs about August. If that doesn’t satisfy one’s thirst for cicada viewing or eating, the 13-year brood is to emerge in 2037 and the 17-year collection in 2041.
If you had recipes in which to use the bugs, like sautéed cicadas with capers on angel hair pasta, remember where you put them for the next emergence.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
Twitter: @sellenews
