coming out in mexico

I run a day-care facility.

A cicada day-care facility.

When I grew up in Oregon, we did not see many cicadas. I assume they live in Oregon. They live almost everywhere in the world.

Now and then my brother and I would watch one of the chunky-bodied aviators kamikaze into our bug zapper. The resulting flare-up must have been visible to astronomers on a small planet orbiting Regulus A.

But, I have never witnessed the onslaught of the 13-year or 17-year ear-splitting invasions in such exotic places as Ohio or Connecticut. Well, that is not exactly true. Between my junior and senior years of high school my parents showed their love for me by sending me off for a portion of the summer with the American Heritage Association to visit just that -- our American heritage. Ranging from Jamestown to Washington, D.C. to Concord.

One June night outside of Williamsburg I saw my first firefly -- an insect that figures in a lot of childhood literature, but was as exotic to me as a dragon. And cicadas. We had apparently arrived in Virginia just as the cicadas were emerging. The night woods were alive with the desperate mating calls of those periodical cicadas.

Other than that one night, my life has been virtually cicada-free. Until I moved to Mexico.

Even though I had a garden when I lived in Villa Obregón, I also had a gardener. There was undoubtedly evidence of their presence in the trees, but I never noticed them. When I would venture forth each night, my attention was solely directed to crocodiles, leaf-cutter ants, and snakes.

That changed when I moved to the house with no name. There are no crocodiles, ants, or snakes in my patio. I also have no gardener. So, my attention has focused on what lives in my patio. And cicadas are on the list.

My first encounter was a cicada corpse -- like the one in the photograph at the top of this essay. Well, corpse is not the correct word. Even though the body looks as if it could be alive, it is merely the molted shell of a cicada. Or, if you want to wow your dinner guests some evening -- its exuvia.

Usually, cicadas live around trees. But my cicadas are Mexican. They take what is available and make do. In my case, they make due with the cup-of-gold vines.

The vines are pretty, but they are also a nuisance. Since my patio is effectively my living room, I need to clean up the fallen leaves and flowers that the vines carelessly discard. I do that three or four times a day.

I saw my first exuvia attached to one of the vine stems. At first, I thought it was alive. It wasn't. It had no more life than a cadaver in the morgue. It just looked more lively.

Then I found another and another and another. Between the four planters there were enough bodies to build a star-antagonist for the next Godzilla movie.

Our cicadas here are known as annual cicadas. When the larvae hatch from eggs laid on the vines, they burrow into the ground and feed off of the roots for three to five years, molting in the dark. When they dig out of their cozy living womb, they climb the vine, attach themselves, and go through a final molting process (just like a butterfly) to emerge as an adult with a face that only a space alien could love.

They then go in search of a mate. I can hear the adult males in the neighborhood exercising their mating rites. The cicadas here are nowhere near as loud as those in the Virginia woods fifty years ago. But the calls cannot be mistaken for anything else. Well, maybe a Soviet-era nuclear power plant in Pyongyang. But nothing other than that.

This time of year, there is a spot in the mountains between Colima and Ciudad Guzmán where the call of cicadas can be heard echoing across the valley. You  can even hear them in a car with the windows rolled up. I always slow down on that part of the trip to or from Guadalajara just to listen.

When I was in Colombia with my cousin and his Colombia wife Patty (Yes, Patty, you are my cousin, also), she told us one of the most fascinating cicada tales I have ever heard (blowing up jiminy cricket). Colombians believe that the cicadas are crickets who sing with joy, and when they cannot stand the pleasure anymore, they explode.

Now, the science-handicapped amongst us will dismiss that as so much superstition, as if truth is based on facts. They rest of us can enjoy the tale for its poetry. Given the choice between joy and the husk of a corpse, I will take the poetry of joy.

The cicada nymph I photographed has not attached itself to a vine. For some reason, it is about 15 feet away from the nearest planter -- on my garage wall. Maybe the wind knocked it off the vine and it is making do.

When I first saw it, I thought it was an exuvia. It wasn't. The nymph was still inside its chrysalis. A first for me. I had never seen a cicada at this stage waiting for its metamorphosis.

I thought I would conduct my own experiment to see how long it would take to emerge. But, unlike butterflies, who I have seen emerge here several times, I missed the event. Within a day, the adult had come out and flown away. Most likely at night.

So, I will continue to watch the cycle of life in my tiny ecosphere as if I were a scientist or a 12-year old boy (because they are similar). But I hope to go on realizing that facts can only get us so far in a world filled with great mysteries.