Chicago area woman collects thousands of cicadas, awaits their return in 2041

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    NORTH AURORA, Illinois (WBBM) — A west suburban woman is already counting down to 2041 because she can’t wait for the drone of the 17-year cicadas to fill her front yard once again.

Suddenly, summer sounds less noisy in North Aurora.

“They were loud enough that you could hear them a few blocks away,” said Bettina Sailer.

A shower from her hose would usually stir them, but Sailer has accepted the fact that there are likely no cicadas left.

“Zero. It’s kind of sad,” she said.

There used to be more, about 6,500 by Sailer’s count. She hand-counted and hand-picked them during visits to various suburbs and even to Springfield, places more plentiful with cicadas than North Aurora.

She made 18 different trips and brought thousands of cicadas home to a netted sanctuary she built in the now shin-high grass of her front yard.

Her crabapple trees are full of tiny cicada eggs. Now that the cicadas are gone, it’s time to mow the lawn and wait for eggs to hatch. She hopes they can resurface in the area in another 17 years.

It’s a wild idea that Sailer tried once before. Her efforts made the front page of the local newspaper in 2007.

“I did this 17 years ago also, and we brought back 800, 900 cicadas, let them loose in the backyard,” she said.

One could call Sailer an amateur researcher, a citizen scientist, or obsessed. She showed CBS 2 some of the paraphernalia she has collected, including cicada wings made into earrings, a cicada keychain and tattoos. Clearly, the little bugs don’t make her skin crawl.

“No!” she said. “I let them crawl on my skin.”

She loves them so much, she preserves them in ink and inside her freezer. Admittedly, Sailer doesn’t share the same affection for any other bug, but to her, the cicada is like one in a billion.

“Isn’t it pretty?” she said. “Even deceased, it’s pretty.”

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