I found one:
They are not sleeping. They are awake and active, almost 12 years old, with eyes still white from living in darkness, perhaps an inch long with forelegs designed for digging.
“They're busy working away,” says Dr. Gene Kritsky.
They are burrowing upward, headed for emergence, perhaps in your back yard. They were last seen en masses in much of this area in 1987. Periodical cicadas — they of the black bodies and blood-red eyes — are due to reappear in 2004.
Some, like Mr. Kritsky, a biologist at the College of Mount St. Joseph, can't wait.
Apparently, neither can moles.
Bery Pannkuk, technical director for Scherzinger, a pest control company, noticed the calls have picked up from people wanting to know what to do about the increasing number of moles showing up and tunneling under their lawns and gardens.
“We've seen a 300 percent increase in mole work over last year,” Mr. Pannkuk said. “That puzzled me. There had to be some reason the mole calls started.”
Until he began digging around in his own yard and noticed thumb-sized holes and cicadas in their last stage of development.
He contacted Mr. Kritsky, an authority on the periodical cicadas, and the plausible explanation is that the moles are leaving woods in large numbers because the cicadas, burrowing upward in the ground in people's yards, are proving irresistible.
“Every year they rise up a little,” Mr. Pannkuk said. “Now they're up so high they're entering into the mole feeding zone. Like fat, juicy Big Macs.”
Mr. Kritsky would like to confirm the suspicion, so he's asked Mr. Pannkuk to give him some mole carcasses.
“So we can do an analysis of the stomach contents,” said Mr. Kritsky, who has been monitoring the growth of the periodical cicadas since 1991. “I have a student lined up who will do an analysis of what they're feeding on. Are they really feeding on cicadas? Basically, we go in and open up their stomachs and see what they've been chewing on.”
Mr. Pannkuk said they are getting five to 10 mole-related calls a day, which is a lot.
It makes sense that the moles would gravitate more to yards, Mr. Kritsky said, because that's where the periodical cicadas deposited their eggs 17 years ago.
“When the female cicada was picking a place to lay eggs, she was looking for a tree that's going to survive 17 years, and that's going to be a small tree,” said Mr. Kritsky. “If the trees have extended roots, they lay their eggs on the ends of branches, the eggs hatch and the young drop to the ground. They don't dig in very far.
“The trees (they choose) will be in full sunlight surrounded by low vegetation, which is somebody's front yard.”
