Listen to Brenda read the story
Seated in the Oval Office of the White House in 1803, the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was studying a document when he heard something at the window. It was a buzzing sound, louder than he had ever heard before. Walking out onto the lawn he was shocked to see thousands upon thousands of cicadas carpeting every tree, shrub, and plant before him. The noise was deafening.
Jefferson’s destiny is about to befall parts of the Eastern seaboard and Midwestern U.S. Over the next month, two different broods of cicadas will hatch at the same time.
This last happened over 200 years ago, around the same time the Louisiana Purchase was signed, the agreement for a historic land purchase from France that Jefferson was, uh, brooding over. The cicada brood designated by the Roman numeral XIX hatches every 13 years and Brood XIII, every 17 years. According to the website Cicada Mania, Brood XIX will be found in 15 states across the Southeast and Midwest, and Brood XIII will hatch in around three states in the Midwest.
The two broods might cross paths in Iowa and Illinois, but they’ll hardly overlap. I think that was very reasonable of the cicadas to reach a franchise agreement before going underground to avoid cannibalizing each other’s…
