Cicada Journals August 1, 2004 to August 6, 2004
8/01/04 - Night visit to St. Patrick Cemetery and No Camera!! - Lowell, MA.
Tonight, I ran out of the house without my camn damera!! Again, I have gone back to St. Patrick Cemetery. I really don't feel like going all the way back home for it so I decide to continue on.
Prior to me entering the Cemetery I had just parked my car and am in the middle of crossing the street. I don't know if you've ever heard the expression that Massachusetts's drivers really suck because we are considered very aggressive in our driving tactics. I have heard that Massachusetts's drivers are often referred to as "Massholes".
Well, tonight I almost fell victim to a "Masshole". So like I said, I'm crossing the street and I swear as God as my witness, this guy whose in a red pick-up truck and wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap actually speeds up even though there was plenty of distance between him and myself before I entered the street.
He speeds up forcing me to run across the street to avoid being hit. He toots his horn and yells some expletive out the window at me. Now normally I would've just "flipped him the bird" as it were but I realized that this was Lowell, and a tough part of town no less. With my luck, he'd pull over and yank out a gun and start shooting at me so I thought better of it.
After he yelled the expletive at me I thought "Yeah, up yours too buddy." and just kept going.
As usual I head to my favorite Ash trees. Unfortunately, no nymphs found this evening on these trees so I decided to do a very wide survey of the cemetery to see if I can discover anything in areas of the cemetery where there was no activity previously.
I discovered one T. canicularis Cicada newly emerged on a Maple tree that borders one of the many roadways. Up until now, I have not been discovering signs of Cicadas on these trees with the exception of the very first exuvium I discovered back on July 24th.
Now that I'm finding exuvia on these roadway trees, seems to be a good sign. I also found another nymph on another Maple tree bordering a different roadway as well. This one is small and so I conclude that it too is a T. canicularis. I needed a female so I decided to take this one home and hope for the best.
So it's around 11:00 pm, been here for an hour, it's pitch black and I'm in the middle of a cemetery with just my backpack slung over my left shoulder and a flash light in my right hand. I'm walking around looking at all the trees. I am walking with the flashlight off because tonight is an especially full bright moon.
Now I know that most people must think walking around in a 68 acre cemetery in the dead of night without any light might be creepy but I find it quite peaceful.
It's especially humid so there is a lot of fog hanging in the air. I have
just scored two T.canicularis Cicadas. One as a nymph and the other
just fully emerged. I decide to check my favorite Ash trees again which
in the past I have scored many nymphs on. I had checked them earlier when
I first entered the cemetery but there was nothing so I decided to make
one last pass by them. After all an hour had
passed since I came in so I'd give them another shot on my way out.
I approach the first Ash tree. It's got to be at least 75 to 100 feet tall, around 5 feet in diameter. In my conversations during one of my many morning visits with the grounds workers they say it's one of several of the oldest trees nearly 400 years old. I always check it very carefully taking my time. I shine the light at it's base and move my flashlight slowly up in a straight line shining the light around 10 feet above my head paying careful attention to the great tree's trunk.
Nothing, time to move to the left about 2 feet and repeat the process all over again, making sure I step very carefully around the base of the tree, I wouldn't want to accidentally crush a nymph as it's walking along the ground. I shine my light again down at the base to up above my head.
All-of-a-sudden I hear a faint rustling noise coming from the other side of the tree which I can't see because the tree is so huge in diameter. I say to myself "Be patient, that noise could be a nymph walking through the leaf litter, check the rest of the tree, don't miss any sections."
So I continue my investigation of the tree trunk as I work my way around, shining my light up and down, up and down. I finally make it around to the other side of the tree where the noise was coming from. On the down-stroke of the beam of my flashlight, I was taken by surprise by a huge skunk with it's tail flexed in defensive posture standing less than two feet away from me. He gave a faint hiss in warning at me.
"You don't have to warn me twice." I said to the skunk as I immediately backed off in a straight line and made a wide arc around him.
After that I had had enough, so I got the hell outta there. There will be other nights.
8/02/04 Two hours at St. Patrick Cemetery and No Joy :( - Lowell, MA.
8:30 am - I spent approximately 2 hours today searching the entire cemetery for Cicadas. Not a single one found. This is unusual as I usually do very good here.
Another thing that's unusual is the growth coming off of this Oak tree. Click on the thumbnails to the left and you'll see what I mean. Look at how big this sucker is. I put my hand in the picture so you can get some kind of perspective as to how big this growth is. What does it remind you of?
Maybe this place is starting to be played out? Who knows? Will check again tonight.
8/02/04 - Back at St. Patrick Cemetery - Lowell, MA.
9:30 pm - Back again and as usual, I check my favorite Ash trees. I find nothing on the first one. However, I find 2 nymphs on the second Ash tree. Seems to be two different species as one is bigger than the other. I'll assume one is T. lyricen and one is T. canicularis. I am noticing this a lot lately. I am finding different species on the same tree. One can conclude that Cicadas must be co-existing under ground on the root system of the same host tree as nymphs.
I do a quick search of other trees and find 3 additional nymphs on pine trees and one newly emerged T. lyricen female. Maybe St. Patrick's isn't quite played out yet.
So I head home with a total of 5 nymphs. This is truely a record find. The previous was 3 nymphs back on July 31st.
I come home and ran into my neighbor Judy. It's about 10:30 pm and I show her the newly emerged T. lyricen Cicada and I explain to her all about Cicadas and their life-cycle. She seems totally interested and fascinated by them. She especially liked how delicate they are.
I showed her the nymphs in the mason jar and she was totally amazed at them. I look into the jar and discover one of the smaller T. canicularis has somehow molted inside the jar and is just laying on the bottom. The other nymphs are just walking all over it and each other. They seem to be a tumbled mass of nymphs. The little T. canicularis that molted didn't make it past one day of life.
The thumbnails to the left are examples of male T. lyricen Cicadas that almost didn't make it. When I collected them as nymphs I had a dead branch set up in my house for them to molt on. The one on the right when he emerged from the exuvium, I noticed that there was a twig that was going to interfere with his left wing during the expansion process so I had this bright idea that I was going to just "snip" the twig in order for this not to happen.
I attempted to cut the twig with a pair of garden snips and the whole branch fell over spilling both Cicadas out of their shells and onto a carpeted floor! I was in shock and cursing myself for being so stupid. I was devastated!
"You killed them!" I thought. "What a stupid stupid man you are!" Don't laugh but I felt like crying (and I'm 40 years old) I was so upset.
The nymphs were at the point where they were virtually hanging up- side-down and only their abdomens were still in the exuvium similar to the one in the top thumbnail.
When they spilled onto the floor they spilled out of their exuvium too! I thought they were dead. I gently picked them up and being careful not to touch the wing buds laid them on my desk on their backs. They laid there and didn't move for 15 minutes as if they were dead. "Yep, you killed them you friggin idiot". I thought.
I studied them closely. After a while, they started to move their legs!
They were still alive!! So I gently allowed them to grasp a tiny twig. I
then gently propped the twigs up at an angle and allowed them to hang there
and watched for an hour. Everything went fine, their wings expanded properly
and they were OK!! They were whole and complete all six legs too!!
I have learned some key things this evening with having 5 nymphs in the same jar. If you must take so many nymphs, at least keep them separated. In that way they won't injur each other.
8/4/04 - A Visit to Springs Brook Swimming Area - Bedford, MA.
8:00
am - After my success in finding Cicadas at St. Patrick Cemetery,
I decided to visit some of the first places I looked for Cicadas. I checked
at Springs Brook Swimming area to see if I could find signs of Cicadas on
the pine trees. To the left is a short clip of the area where I searched
with no results.
Obviously when I went to other areas mentioned in the clip, there were no signs there either.
8/6/04 - Pine Ridge Cemetery Some Place New - Chelmsford, MA.
8:00 am - This is a new cemetery I discovered while driving around. It looked pretty big so I decided to drive in and take a look.
I did find 6 exuvia on various pine and Maple trees but no Cicadas today.
I noticed over by the cemetery office there was a guy sort of standing around having a smoke and watching what I was doing. He was the only one there so I decided to go over and introduce myself. I figured that since I found signs of Cicadas and probably would be visiting here during the day and at night after hours that I'd better let someone know.
I walked up to the guy with the smoke and said, "Hey, howse-it going? You in charge here?"
"Me?", he replied. "Hell no I'm just a peeon worker. You'll want to talk to George. He's coming up right now, see?"
I looked over and saw a short stocky man drive up the driveway in a pick-up truck. I nodded my thanks to the peeon and walked over to the truck.
As George got out of the truck I asked, "George?" to which he nodded in afirmation.
"My name is Gerry and if you wouldn't mind I'd like to ask you a few questions about your trees." I always open up a conversation with this, it's much easier to segway into my real purpose.
George said ok and I noticed that he actually had a Greek-sounding accent but I wasn't sure on this. So I asked, "How old are your trees here?"
"Well, the oldest trees are about 50 to 60 years old. Some of the trees here I planted myself when I started 10 years ago. Those are over there."
He pointed to several young trees bordering the main roadway. Maples mostly.
"Ah! I see." I replied. "Well George let me tell you why I'm here. I'm doing a study on Cicadas of Massachusetts, do you know what those are?"
"Cicada's? No. I never heard of them."
I promptly started with the life cycle of a Cicada and showed him the 5 or 6 exuvia I found on the trees in his cemetery. He suddenly became concerned and asked if they were pests and wanted to know if they were going to hurt his trees. Of which I promptly responded to the contrary.
"They won't harm your trees." I said. "In fact, the Cicadas have probably been here a lot longer than the cemetery has been here. Have you ever noticed these sort of shells on your trees before?"
"No actually. This is the first time I ever heard of them. Me and the guys are always mowing the lawns but I have never noticed them because I'm constantly looking at the ground so they go by un-noticed."
"Ok." I said. "Do you do anything to your trees like use fertilizer or spray for insects? Anything like that?"
"No. All we do is keep the undergrowth from growing around the trees."
I told George that I was studying the Cicadas and that he would see me from time to time wondering around the cemetery looking at the trees. I also asked him what time the cemetery closed at night.
"The cemetery never closes. There is a law in the Chelmsford town charter that say the cemeteries must be opened at all times."
"Really?" I responded. "Cemeteries? How many cemeteries in Chelmsford are there?"
George mentioned that there were 8 cemeteries in Chelmsford and that he and his crew of men were in charge of maintaining the grounds in all of them and that their main office was where we were standing.
Some of the cemeteries he mentioned I have actually been to.
"So George, I thought I'd let you know that I probably would be visiting this cemetery after hours and I just wanted to let you know. You know, just in case you get some reports of strange lights in your cemetery at night."
George looked at me and said, "I don't have a problem with that but you should be aware that the police patrol in here. We've had a few problems with vandalism at night. The kids come in and like to drink. If I were you I would let the superindendant know what you are doing and just make him aware."
"What's the super's name?"
"David Boyle."
"Ok, I'll check in with him. When do you expect him?
"He should be here any time now."
So George and I talked for a while about other things. While we were chatting, the rest of his crew finally showed up. Everyone had coffees in their hands. They had obviously stopped at Dunkin' Donuts before coming in. The crew's responsibility is to help in maintaining the cemetery grounds as well as moving and fixing the headstones and digging graves.
One guy in particular stuck out. An older, spry man by the name of Al.
George and I arrived to where the crew was standing. Al was in mid-conversation.
"...and boy am I sore as hell!!" Al exclaimed.
One of the crew turned to me and said, "Al was just telling us about last night. He has a 45 year old girlfriend and he's 76."
"Really?" I asked. "Jeeze Al congratulations you cradle robber you."
"Tell me about it." He responded. "Boy she loves it when
I take that Viagra"
"You take Viagra?" I asked. "Does that stuff really work?"
"Hell yeah! You want some?"
Everyone started laughing. My face turned beat red and I said "No thanks!!"
This group of guys were really great, after I let them know what I was doing, they seemed really interested and starting treating me like I was one of them.
Eventually David Boyle the superindendant showed up and I introduced myself to him. He gave me his business card and indicated that he didn't have a problem with me coming in after hours.
