Think cicadas are weird? Wait until you meet your superfans

FOREST PARK, Illinois – Mayumi Barrack sees a pair of periodical cicadas gathering, pulls out her phone, says, “Hi guys!” and take a photo of them.

“I don’t really like bugs, but as I watch them more and more, I feel like they’re adorable,” Barrack explained, noting that many other creatures — birds, squirrels, raccoons and more — are equally eager to get close to the bugs, even if it is to turn them into food. “I just want to document that they existed.”

And boy, does she. Barrack posted more than 4,600 photos of the bugs on the Cicada Safari app for cicada enthusiasts. That’s 2,000 more than its closest competitor. She is the queen of cicada hunters, although she doesn’t actually chase them—most of the photos are of her yard—and she sees herself more as a bug mother than a queen.

“I’m taking care of them,” Barrack said, standing in her tree- and flower-filled backyard in suburban Chicago.

Periodical cicadas are strange, with eccentricities that include super strong urine flow and a zombie yeast infection. But its superfans are also unusual, or at least highly passionate.

Gene Kritsky, a biology professor at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, has been working for this year’s massive emergence of cicadas for decades. He first heard about cicadas in 1972 and has been studying and chasing them since 1974. He wrote the book about the current emergency, “A Tale of Two Broods.” He also created the cicada tracking app that enthusiasts like Barrack use to post photos and find out where the insects are in large numbers.

This is the third time Kritsky has mapped Brood XIII of cicadas. This is quite an achievement since they only come out every 17 years.

Often wearing a safari hat that makes him look like the Indiana Jones of cicadas, as he has been called, Kritsky and his wife, artist Jessee Smith, have traveled from Ohio to Illinois several times this spring to feast on the insects. Over several long nights in a forest north of Chicago, he saw enormous numbers, including his first one blue-eyed cicada in a million. He cited the May 24 surge as “incredible,” with thousands of people coming out that night at his location.

“Peripheral cicadas are the gateway to natural history,” said Kritsky.

For New York chef Joseph Yoon, cicadas aren’t just amazing, they’re dinner. His company Brooklyn Bugs is on a mission to spread awareness about the taste and sustainability of edible insects, even though he knows many people are grossed out by the idea.

Yoon spent nine days in Illinois collecting, freezing and then bagging tens of thousands of cicadas. After returning home, he served cicada tempura to 400 people at a Syracuse University event.

Yoon said collecting and cooking cicadas “is very painful for me because I love cicadas so much.”

But he added: “At the same time, I can also recognize and appreciate that the life of each of these cicadas represents the potential to transform someone’s perception or opinion about eating insects.”

Yoon’s friend, Wisconsin artist and teacher Jennifer Angus, also sees the beauty in cicadas and other insects — so much so that she incorporates the real bugs into her art. Sometimes she would dress them up and pose as dolls.

“I love them because they have beautiful faces, googly eyes and are very resilient,” said Angus. “They stand up to the wear and tear of my exhibits.”

“I think their faces are funny,” said Angus.

Renee Martin is a professor of architecture at the University of Kentucky and is also interested in puppetry. For a Cincinnati puppet festival three years ago — when Brood X was making news on the East Coast — someone suggested she invent a cicada costume or puppet.

“What would I do? A cicada striptease?” she asked her friends, who gave a resounding yes.

She crafted “something between a puppet and a costume” for that festival, then dragged it out again for this year’s big pop-up, putting on a show in a Cincinnati alley for friends, neighbors and visiting journalists.

Martin, wearing fake fishnets and moving comically to stripper music, starts out as a pale cardboard nymph and then erupts as a red-eyed adult nymph. The audience added to the effect with noises and shouts of “ooh la la” and “sexy cicada”.

Meanwhile, photos of cicadas are swarming on Kritsky’s app, with nearly 5,000 people posting. About 150 people posted at least 100 photos of cicadas, but none of them are close to Barrack – who said she was surprised to be leading.

“I have so many photos that I haven’t sent yet,” she said.