T he first recorded American sighting of the cicada brood now known as Brood XIV was made by William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, in 1634—and he was impressed by what he beheld. “There was such a quantity of a great sort of flies like for bigness to wasps or bumblebees,” he wrote in his journal, “and soon made such a constant yelling noise…as ready to deaf the hearers.” Bradford and the rest of the colonists were not deafened for long. As it has done every 17 years since,