Tiny nymphs hide among the trees of East Texas.

For years, they lead quiet, uneventful infant lives, content to drink the sap of tree roots as they burrow deeper and deeper into the soil.

But as they grow older, the midsummer night beckons.

Saying goodbye to the safety of childhood, the nymphs emerge from underground, climb their nurturing tree and set about the process of becoming adults.

They wiggle free from their brown baby skin. They spread translucent, green wings, and – in the culmination of a two- to five-year lifespan – they set off to do adult things until they die within five or six weeks.

That’s the life of a dog-day cicada.

News-Journal photographer Les Hassell spent a recent night documenting the cicada nymphs in his backyard. With a flashlight in one hand and a camera in the other, he captured the cicadas’ metamorphoses as they shed their skin and left the brown shells behind. A video of the transformations can be found here.

From the pine trees in his backyard, the cicadas flew off to find mates.

The males attract females by “singing” – rubbing together ridges on their sides to create a shrill-sounding hum.

“Everybody hears them,” said Scott Ludwig, a researcher with the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. “When you get into an area where there’s a bunch of them, it can be pretty deafening.”

After mating, the females lay eggs on twigs and small branches of trees. The eggs hatch six or seven weeks later.

The nymphs fall to the ground and burrow into the soil, where they seek the tree roots that will sustain them for the next two to five years.

When it is time, they will emerge, climb a tree and stake the next generation’s claim to adulthood.

Sources: Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service, insects.tamu.edu; and the Scholastic Bug Dictionary

Published August 13, 2009, in the Longview News-Journal