As loud as leaf blowers, the insects are set to overtake the landscape. By Rivka Galchen 
Male fruit flies who are denied access to females drown their sorrows in the alcohol of fermented fruits. Some female Polistes wasps, who fight for dominance, can recognize one another’s faces and accurately assess if another wasp is too strong to challenge in battle. Bumblebees will choose to roll small balls around, at length—apparently for the fun of it—even when it means neglecting food nearby. Honeybees who have had a near-miss with a predator appear to be more pessimistic than their peers. When I saw that the periodical cicadas were coming, it was irresistible to me as a topic, maybe even more so, because as a child I was too afraid even to hold a grasshopper. I couldn’t yet access insects as wondrous, weird, ancient species. Periodical cicadas particularly appealed to me because their life cycle is epic, their metamorphosis extreme. They are underground for more than a decade before they dig up to the surface, where they enjoy a few weeks of a different kind of life before they die. It’s an arc resonant with the dead emerging from their graves, but festively—more Día de los Muertos than “Dawn of the Dead.” It’s nice when what scans on first glance as a horror story—a million locust-looking things per acre, sawing away—turns out to be something innocuous, even sweet, which is the case with these cicadas, though not with their parasitic enemies. Their apparent indifference to humans is also appealing. They don’t startle—they just carry on. | .png)
