Community Corner
Why Are There More Cicadas in Scotch Plains and Fanwood Than Neighboring Towns?
Patch tries to figure out why our towns seem to be a cicada hotbed.
On a drive over to Kramer Park in Scotch Plains two weeks ago, I chatted with my tennis partner about all the cicadas here.
I told her about the call-out for cicada sightings I posted on both Clark-Garwood Patch and Scotch Plains-Fanwood Patch recently. Here in Scotch Plains-Fanwood, folks replied en masse and submitted oodles of cicada photos and videos. But in Clark and Garwood, things were quiet. And just a few minutes away from town at my home in North Plainfield, I hadn't seen one cicada.
When we got to Kramer Park, the cicada singing was the loudest I've heard it. And then we tried to play tennis.
Cicadas crawled up the nets, the fencing around the courts, and swooped down from trees. Many tried to land on us. We shooed them away with our rackets. (The wide, useful swatting tool made me thankful we were playing tennis, and not, say, golf.)
That same day, cicadas invaded the Fanwood Business and Professional Association Street Fair; NJ.com reported that "a pesky swarm of cicadas, who descended on fair-goers, sent them shrieking and ducking for cover."
And then the following Wednesday, a cicada even made its way inside the Scotch Plains Board of Education building, crawling beneath my seat at the Fanwood-Scotch Plains Consolidation Committee's meeting.
On the Internet, I'd watched the video one Scotch Plains resident sent in to NJ 101.5, where every foot of her yard was covered in cicadas. And then I found a 1996 NBC broadcast from a Scotch Plains home when the cicadas emerged 17 years ago.
"They're disgusting," says resident Carol Mendalski in the video, as her husband Gene defends the cicadas, reminding her that they're "a friendly bug, they don't hurt you." (The Mendalskis have since moved to Manchester, according to an update to the report, where Carol hopes to be cicada-free.)
It all made me wonder, why are Scotch Plains and Fanwood such cicada hotbeds, while many neighboring towns are cicada-less?
And so I asked the experts: Joe Filo, a senior park naturalist at Trailside Nature & Science Center in Mountainside, and Chris Sellers, a history professor studying cicadas at Stony Brook University.
Why would there be cicadas in one town and not the one next to it? It all comes down to the town's history, they say.
"Seeing a lot of cicadas, means what people have done to the town has not driven them out," says Sellers. "Cicadas are most prevalent where there are mature, big trees that haven’t been cut in the process of development, and where there hasn’t been intensive farming. Larvae live in soil and have to be undisturbed. Any town where farming has happened or big road development or more intense building will have cicadas on a much smaller scale."
"Clark is a younger town than Scotch Plains," adds Filo, comparing. "There was also lots of farming historically in Clark, which reduces the number of cicadas. Even if farming stopped years ago – the cicadas only come every 17 years, so that's only so many opportunities to catch up."
I ask Filo about my sister in Cranford, who says she hasn't seen any at her home and is wondering if the flooding the town sustained during Hurricane Irene killed the cicadas.
"It's a possibility," says Filo. "There are way fewer cicadas in the flood plains, wetlands, any place where the water table is too high. The Great Swamp in Morris County has almost none."
Why else might the cicadas make Scotch Plains and Fanwood home? Wooded parks are a cicada favorite according to Sellers."Cicadas love parks – particularly if you don’t cut the trees in the park," says Sellers. "Parks in Scotch Plains and Fanwood are of that sort. Cicadas especially seem to like different kinds of hardwood trees – oak, hickory, maple."
So take every cicada as a compliment, they say – it's proof that Scotch Plains and Fanwood have retained plenty of big, old trees and that the land hasn't been too disturbed.
"You have a healthier ecology," Sellers says. "You can look at it that way. People in town value having leafy greenery around them, wooded areas, parks. For the cicadas, that's a more authentic environment."
The cicadas have made for a fun exhibit at the Trailside Nature and Science Center in the Watchung Reservation, says Filo. Though they are beginning to die off in Scotch Plains and Fanwood, the bugs are emerging now on the other side of Route 22, working their way up the mountain and into the reservation.
"When we go out with the young kids, they love pointing them out and yelling 'Cicada!,'" says Filo. "At the height of them emerging now, we could spend the whole program just doing that."
Filo had a group of children from the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan visit recently and wondered how city kids would take to the bugs.
"Once they realized they're harmless, they weren't afraid," he says. "They were putting them on their fingers and carrying them around. The approach I've taken is to tell them how lucky they are to see this now, since they won't be back for another 17 years. They're one of nature's great spectacles."
Sellers, who studies land use and suburban ecology, has also researched changing attitudes toward the cicada over the years.
"In 1911, they were reported to be our most feared insect," he says. "Farming communities then were really freaked out. They called them locusts and equated them with grasshoppers as destroying crops. In 20th century, people were annoyed but didn't have that same level of worry. And now I think there's a fascination that comes with their reemergence."
Some folks are even using this opportunity to give the bugs a whirl in the frying pan. The University of Maryland recently produced a book of cicada recipes, including ones for "Cica-Delicious Pizza" and "Banana Cicada Bread."
And if you aren't quite so fascinated or eager to add the bugs to your diet, no worries - the cicadas are on their way out.
"It's two weeks at best for their singing time," says Sellers. "And then they all vanish about the same time from a place, with a few stragglers."
How do you feel about the cicadas? Tell us in the comments.
Also: Check out the photos and videos your neighbors submitted to our Scotch Plains-Fanwood cicada gallery and add your own.
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