The Red Eyed Locusts

 

We always called them the 17 year locusts, those orange cloaked red eyed Cicadas that emerge in the late Spring every seventeen years. I suppose it was because they came out in such numbers and swarmed like locusts.

The annual “Jar Fly” Cicadas as we called them, are much larger and are green with dark eyes. They usually come out in late Summer and announce themselves with a loud “Rear, Rear, Rear” call. Oh how I hated that sound when I was a kid on the farm. It marked the end of summer vacation and the beginning of the laborious harvest season for tobacco and hay, those daylight to dark miserable days of heat and sweat, eye burning tobacco gum and choking hay dust in the loft of a tin roofed barn.

The Jar Flies didn't emerge in large numbers, and you could hear individual ones calling. When disturbed, they emit a very loud raspy sound and shake violently, startling the disturber. That behavior is probably how they got their name. As I grew older and left the farm for work in the city, the sound of the Jar Fly brought back memories of my childhood days, except the dread of harvest turned into melancholy dreams of a simpler life and the happiness it brought.

The Jar Flies are active in the daytime, flying around in trees and singing, but are quiet at night. The Katydids come out at night and would sing me to sleep from a big Maple tree in our yard. The “Did-it, Did-it, Did-it” sound was soothing coming through the screened window beside my bed. We had no fans or air conditioning in our Civil War era log house built by settlers, so in Summer we would leave windows open and let the cool night air in. To this day, the sound of the Katydids is very soothing to me.

Now the Red Eyed Locusts are an altogether different thing. My first encounter with them was in 1953 when I was six years old. Dad had leased our farm to a coal company for stripping. A big drag line shovel was moved in and they started gouging out huge trenches and leaving mountainous spoil piles of rock, dirt and shale as they uncovered and dug out the coal. The digging machine ran 24 hours a day. Its huge engine ran at a slow RPM with a thunderous “Bomp, Bomp, Bomp” sound, and its speed varied with the load on the engine. You could hear the engine strain with every bucket load that was lifted out of the pit.

The Red Eyed Locusts came out early that Spring, announcing the ensuing destruction that followed that Summer. Unlike the Jar Flies, they have an eerie call, “uh-OHHH-oh, uh-OHHH-oh”, a mournful sound that drones on without intermission … as if marking the beginning of an Apocalyptic event. At least that is the way I heard it then, at six years old.

There was a historic drought that Summer. The Coal Temple, (a building housing a crusher and truck loading hopper), and the Scale House for weighing the loaded coal, were located about 1/4 mile from our house on the narrow one lane gravel road. The trucks hauled the coal out on the road going by our house, and as the summer passed, the dust from the heavy trucks got worse and worse. A huge billowing cloud of choking dust followed the trucks as they passed, as if they were rocket powered. Our house was only about 30 yards from the road, and the dust cloud came seeping through any cracks in the doors or windows that were shut to keep it out, covering everything in a thick film of dust. It was hard to keep the windows shut though because mom cooked on a coal fired cook stove (even in Summer). Fortunately though, the Kitchen was located in the back of the house, and mom was able to open those windows to help keep it cooler. I can still see my mom in her flour sack print apron that she had sewn on the treadle Singer machine, canning green beans with a steaming and spewing Pressure Cooker on that hot coal stove, sweat streaming down her face while squinting and puffing to keep it our of her eyes. She was young then, about 30, and worked as hard as any man in the fields to do her part for the family.

The second encounter with the Red Eyed Locusts was in 1970. Elaine and I had been married for 1 1/2 years. Dad had helped me buy a little piece of property close to where he lived, and my Brother-in-Law Don was helping to clear off a place to set our 10'x40' mobile home. It was a small home that we had purchased from my sister, but we were glad to get it and be able to move out of the city into the country where we were raised. The lot was previously the site of a one room country school that my grandfather and my mother had attended when they were young. The building was in use in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but it was torn down during the Depression. By the time we bought it in 1970, it was covered in thick bushes and tree saplings and required a bulldozer to clear.

Don loved car racing, and he took off work to go to the Indy 500 race on Memorial Day weekend. The Red Eyed Locusts were in full emergence, and again their eerie calls invoked thoughts of Armageddon. A lot of the saplings and branches of the larger trees had big gouged out places in the bark where the female locusts had deposited eggs with their Ovipositors. This stunted the smaller trees.

The next encounter with the locusts was in 1987. My dad had a severe heart condition that Spring and couldn't get out much because of it. But he was able to go over to my brother's Bar-b-Que for a meal. At the time my brother was building a house, and after we ate, we went over to see how it was coming along, and to help him raise some of the walls. Dad went with us, being the mentor and cultivator of construction for us, but wasn't able to do much physical work other than offering advice.

A few days later, I woke up very early to the sound of my phone ringing. It was mom. Dad had gotten up, had fallen to the floor flat faced with a thud, and was unconscious. I quickly put some clothes on and drove about 2 miles to their house. Dad was not breathing and had no pulse when I arrived. Mom was standing in the doorway to the Den, fully dressed with her coat on and purse in hand. She was in a state of shock and had always had trouble dealing with death, or even getting seriously sick. She goes into a state of denial and can't properly grieve whenever she encounters death of a loved one.

I administered CPR and continued until the Paramedics arrived, but dad never responded.

The Red Eyed Locusts were beginning to emerge when we gathered at Mom's house after the funeral. Again, the eerie sound of their call invoked a feeling of a looming Apocalyptic event. Shivers ran up my spine when I heard them while standing in dad's little garden of potatoes that he had planted just days before.

The next encounter with the Red Eyed Locusts was in 2004. After dad died, my mother sold the farm in plots. My brother and I bought two of them in the 90's. I was farming my portion and had just built a new house on it in 2000. We planted an orchard with apple, peach, cherry and pear trees when we moved in the house, and they were beginning to bear fruit. The locusts damaged the little trees, but didn't kill them, although they didn't bear fruit that year.

The last encounter I had with the Red Eyed Locusts locally was in 2021. The COVID Pandemic was killing a lot of people and wreaking havoc that year. The political extremists were still on a quest to overthrow our Democracy after loosing the election in 2020. Many family members were split and fighting each other at the dinner table. The sound of the locusts call, that “uh-OHHH-oh” droning on and on, and the apparent rise of a false prophet as predicted in the book of Revelations, truly felt like an impending doom was upon us. And the trouble is, it did not end there with the attempted coup d'tat. Followers and co-conspirators started throwing monkey wrenches into the Justice system to gum up the works to delay and prevent prosecution of those responsible. It seemed that evil forces were going to overpower us.

The 17 year locust cycles are not synchronous throughout the United States, and may occur in different years regionally. In addition, some groups come out in 13 year cycles. In my area, we have not seen a 13 year cycle group, but in some areas both groups can be present. In those areas, both groups can emerge in the same year once every 137 years. 2024 is one of those rare years, and in the areas affected, the locust population will be huge.

We have seen a rise in Autocrats throughout the world in the last decade. They have gained power and control over their countries, and seek to go worldwide. They have infiltrated even into our country and influence our elections through subtle propaganda in our news, social media, and information networks. Some in our own government and religious organizations have fallen prey to their lies and hate mongering.

This year, a rare year of the Red Eyed Locusts, is also a year in which Americans will make a choice to follow a vengeful Autocrat into an oblivion of oppression and poverty, or to continue the free and prosperous Democracy that our forefathers and mothers have fought and given their lives for.

This year the Red Eyed Locusts may truly be sounding the alarm of Armageddon for our country and the world that looks up to us as a leader for righteousness and justice.

Dan Bowlds