It’s a sizzling afternoon in the summer of 2013 in the suburbs of Virginia, and the air is filled with shrieks. An insect flutters to the ground, nearly colliding with my head. As she perches on a nearby tree stump, I capture her silhouette on camera, the intersecting orange lines of her wings against her jet-black body. To the screaming children at the park playground, she’s a menace. To me, it’s like the earth has opened up to deliver a marvel that has been hidden right under our feet for the last 17 years: the cicadas of Brood II.
