A national insect?

SENSING I was from out of town, the taxi driver asked me if I'd ever heard of Brood X.

Nope, I replied, feeling intrigued but also uneasy, "Brood X" taking an almost ominous tone. I was, after all, in Washington, the belly of the whale, breathing the same air as Dubya Bush and other politicians whose decisions were shaping the lives of people all around the world.

The cab driver looked at his rear view mirror and then instructed me, "Look behind you, lower right hand corner of the window. There's one of them."

Did I want to look? What was this Brood X? I could imagine some slimy creature clinging to the window, large beady eyes staring at me, flicking a tongue a foot long. But I decided to be brave and looked.

"Oh my goodness," I squealed, much to the consternation of the cab driver, "it's a. . ." and suddenly I was struck down by a senior moment, unable to remember what the English name was, "it's a kuliglig."

"A what?" the driver asked, obviously disappointed that I hadn't broken out screaming like characters in the film "Nightmare on Elm Street."

I was able to snap out of my senior moment and explained that kuliglig was Tagalog for cicadas, and I explained how cicadas always reminded me of idyllic nights in rural areas back home, as thousands of cicadas rendered their songs.

"Songs, huh?" The cab driver was probably thinking, what a wimp, as he turned into the driveway leading to my hotel. End of conversation.

I checked in, got to my room, looking forward to a nice warm bath, but lo and behold, the hotel management had prepared a printed advisory, "Information on the 17-Year Cicadas," to welcome visitors.

That's where I learned about Brood X. Apparently, every 17 years, the US East Coast and parts of the Midwest are "attacked" by Brood X, millions upon millions of cicadas, with estimates of 100,000 to 1.5 million cicadas per acre (about half a hectare).

And where do these creatures come from? They emerge from underground tunnels (with exits looking like tiny smoke chimneys) where they've been living as nymphs, a stage of development of insects. For 16 years and 11 months, these nymphs chomp away at the roots of trees, waiting for the right time. When the correct summer temperature is reached around the middle of May, they come out into the world, shedding their skins in a process called molting, and emerging as adult cicadas, initially with white soft wings which eventually turn brown.

Forbidding as "Brood X" may sound, the cicadas are actually extremely vulnerable to predators. Birds and snakes and squirrels and dogs and cats all have a field day chomping away at these insects. Some Americans actually eat them; I heard one culinary treat is to dip the cicadas in chocolate.

For the poor cicadas then, it's therefore a race against time as they try to accomplish their mission: to mate and to lay eggs. They buzz around frantically, mildly terrorizing humans. Which was why my hotel had its advisory and some assurance: "There is nothing we can do to stop the cicadas from coming. If you encounter one in your room, please call housekeeping at extension 11 and we will promptly remove the insect."

After mating, the females, as usual, have to do most of the work, cutting slits in the branches of trees to lay thousands of eggs.

What happens after this mating and egg-laying frenzy? Well, when I was there, Washington's sidewalks were strewn with the crunchy corpses of Brood X. Yes, gloriously satiated, they die.

But let it not be said their deaths were in vain. The eggs hatch within six weeks, the cicada larvae dropping to the ground and burrowing into the soil where they will live until 2020 before reemerging into a Washington without Dubya Bush and, hopefully, a more peaceful world.

How does the cicada fare in the Philippines? I pulled out my rather old (and, wow, autographed) book on Philippine insects by Clare R. Baltazar and Nelia P. Salazar and found out we have several species of cicadas, varying in size and coming in red, green, black. Each species has its own characteristic song, and like their American counterparts, only the males sing. Baltazar and Salazar quote from some unnamed author: "Happy are the (male) cicadas for they all have dumb wives." I was flabbergasted, but quickly realized that "dumb" meant "mute" or "silent."

And do they have 17-year cycles? Baltazar and Salazar say the developmental period of local cicadas has not been observed. As far as I know, we get them all year round, year after year. Maybe they have shorter cycles; maybe the broods overlap.

I also got to thinking, with a new Congress about to convene with most members now brain dead from the electoral canvassing, they could impress us by proposing a bill to declare a national insect since, as far as I know, we don't have one yet.

Why the cicada? Because I think they're so very Pinoy. The males are noisy, especially when they want to impress, in courtship or in congress (legislative and otherwise). And while the males spend all their time singing, the females work so very hard. Then, too, the cicadas are prolific, with local ones having apparently short breeding cycles.

More than all that, to make my case for the cicada as a national insect, here's an interesting piece of information from the historian Edmond Morris' book, "Theodore Rex."

Six Brood X cycles before, meaning way back in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery where he tried to deflect criticism over reports of military abuses in the Philippine Islands, then a recently acquired colony:

"Is it only in the Philippines that Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all other Americans to regret?" Roosevelt asked. "No! From time to time there occur in our country, to the deep and lasting shame of our people, lynchings carried on under circumstances of inhuman cruelty and barbarity -- cruelty infinitely worse than any that has ever been committed by our troops in the Philippines."

Like the cicada broods, history does repeat itself, what with American troops now in trouble over their behavior in Iraq. And as in the 1902 cicada invasion, so too in 2004 do we find a US president making all kinds of excuses for his government's misbehavior. But guess what? Roosevelt's speech was apparently drowned out by what Morris called "invisible choirs of 17-year cicadas."

Look at that, even then the cicadas could see through the US government, especially the way they were handling the Philippines. Given all that we know now about the cicadas, American or Pinoy, don't you think they deserve some recognition?

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