Seeing a cicada
Seeing a cicada brings you close to one of summer's loudest insects, though only the males sing. In some species the silent females do the choosing, a pattern that shows up wherever the loudest voices are not the ones deciding.
What it may mean
A summer cicada chorus is all male. Each singer flexes a pair of drum-like plates on his body hundreds of times a second, and the hollow abdomen amplifies the sound until a tree full of them can drown out a conversation. The females make no song at all; the Greek wit Xenarchus called cicadas happy because their wives were voiceless. He had it backward. In some species the silent females are the ones choosing, listening to the din and answering a chosen male with a small flick of the wings. The loudest sound in the tree is not where the decision happens. Offices, families and group chats work the same way. A cicada on a branch or a screen door is a cue to watch who is choosing around you, and where your own small signal does more than shouting.
Depending on how you saw it
Singing loudest in the heat
Many annual cicadas sing hardest when the day is hottest, and the buzz swells and fades in waves across the trees. Heat turns the volume up. When things heat up around you, do you get louder or go still?
A fresh adult, pale green, on a trunk
A cicada that has just left its nymph skin is soft and pale, and it hangs still for hours while its body hardens and darkens. It cannot fly until it is ready. How long do you give yourself to harden after a big change?
A fine mist falling under a tree
Cicadas drink watery sap and release the excess as a light spray, so people under a busy tree sometimes feel a drizzle on a clear day. The rain is the insects. What little mystery around you had a simple explanation once you looked up?
Why it happens in nature
Male cicadas sing by rapidly buckling ribbed plates called tymbals on either side of the body, and the song generally grows with the heat of the day. Annual cicadas appear every summer, while periodical broods emerge in huge numbers only after many years underground. They drink watery sap and release the excess as a fine spray.
What folk beliefs say
Ancient Greece
The ancient Greek comic poet Xenarchus of Rhodes, a 1903 collection recalls, joked: "Happy the cicadas' lives, since they all have voiceless wives."
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 604. View the page
To reflect on
In a noisy situation, who is actually making the decision, and could it be you?