The New Yorker:

As loud as leaf blowers, the insects are set to overtake the landscape.

By Rivka Galchen

Their parents passed away thirteen, or maybe seventeen, years ago. They grow up alone, hidden in tunnels of their own making, nursing from the rootlets of trees. In those narrow tunnels, they go through five molts, each time emerging from their shed exoskeleton larger than they were before, until somehow, they know. After thirteen, or maybe seventeen, years of subterranean night, they will, finally, dig toward the air. A little chimney of displaced dirt will announce them. When they surface, they are pale nymphs and they climb their home trees. They cast off their exoskeletons like heavy capes and soon enough their pallor blushes to a bright attractive green. The males start to sing. The females dance, subtly, with their wings. And there are so many of them! They have around five weeks to meet, mate, and hope not to be eaten before their clamorous carnival ends, and they die off, leaving behind their remains, as numerous as leaves in the fall. The scent of their decay is not unrelated to that of old beer.

For some people, the whole romantic cycle is, understandably, a nightmare: billions of toe-sized insects, as many as a million per acre, on lawns and on wooden fences and on your pants. They evince no fear; their pace is that of zombies and, yet, the collective song of these slow-moving hordes is as loud as roadwork, or advancing artillery. Some of them even have red eyes.

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