Am I losing it?

Lately I've had this strange buzzing in my ears. It comes and goes, but always the same type of sound.

The first time I noticed it I was driving and assumed that it was poor radio reception and thought nothing more of it. The next time I was in the car I was listening to a CD instead of the radio and still heard the buzzing. A lose ground or something, I wondered? No matter...

Then I realized that I was hearing this buzzing every time I was in the car. It fades in and out as I drive down the street. I tried to correlate the noise with something -- driving under or near a power line, perhaps? I couldn't figure it. It didn't really correlate with anything.

Lately I've noticed the same (or similar) buzzing while I sit here at the computer writing to you folks. This monitor must be about ready to fry, I figured. Tried slapping it, shaking it... all the normal things one does to uncooperative machines. Then I realized that the buzzing is still there when I turn the monitor off.

Finally it hit me: It's really noisy in the car when I go under large mesquite or palo verde trees. And I think in the office the sound is coming from outside the window.

Yes, yes that's it! It's cicadas! I can't believe how loud and annoying cicadas are. I mean forget Chinese Water Torture.. I'll talk, I'll talk! We don't even have insects like this at home! But this is certainly the time of year for them. Both Desert USA and How Stuff Works have an excellent short description of cicadas.

You have to admire their tenacity and longevity. Apparently they stay underground in larval form for 1 to 17 years (depending on the sub-species) and only emerge when the timing is right for about 5 weeks. They crawl out of the ground and into a shrub or tree where they shed their larval casing (usually the same day as leaving the ground) and morph into adult form (shown below). The males make the unbelievably loud buzzing noise to attract females. (Some call it "chirping"... I beg to differ. Songbirds "chirp".)


How Stuff Works offers a description of the sound, and states that one cicada can produce a call in excess of 120 decibels at close range! Don't know what that means? According to the website this approaches the pain threshold of the human ear.

Want to know what it sounds like? Joanna Phillips has posted a number of .mp3 files of cicada noise here.