Illinois Cicadas Dying Off: Here’s How Long The Stench Will Last

Even though this year's Great Cicada Emergence has been somewhat uneven (some places, like the Chicago suburbs, got even more cicadas than were expected, while other places, like Chicago itself and the Northwest suburbs, have gotten almost no cicadas at all), it seems like it's safe to say that we're beyond the halfway point here in mid-June.

For those spots that have been thickly infested with cicadas, most of the noise, sex, and constant urination has come to a close, and we're about to enter what some people have called the most unpleasant part of the cicada emergence: the piles of decomposing cicada bodies creating an absolutely awful stench.

I've seen several descriptions of what the smell is like, from "roadkill," to "rotten eggs and rotten vegetation," and even "stinky feet and socks." Regardless of how you might describe it, the most important question is "how long do we have to deal with it?"

Here's The Thing: With Billions And Billions Of Cicadas Dying Off In Illinois, It's Going To Take A While For Their Bodies To Decompose Into The Soil, And Until They Do...You're In For Some Serious Stink

However, according to those cicada experts we've been hearing so much from over the last 6 months, it's all totally worth it because dead cicadas make for an outstanding fertilizer, especially for your trees.

In fact, it's been widely reported that some trees bloom even better the year after a cicada emergence, thanks to all the nutrients the dead ones pack into the soil.

So, if you can keep yourself focused on improved health for your trees next year, you can probably ride out the raunchy stink, right? Right?

If You're Having A Problem With "Cicada Stench," There Are A Couple Of Things You Can Do About It, And One Thing To Keep In Mind

As we mentioned, you could just deal with it and think about how your trees are being fertilized, but if that's not something you'd like to do, here are some of the suggestions I've rounded up from all over the cicada-covered Midwest:

• Rake or shovel up the cicada bodies and add them to your compost
• Rake or shovel up the cicada bodies and move them far away from the area (making it someone else's problem)
• Shovel out a hole big enough for a mass cicada burial
• Use a leaf vacuum to collect the cicada bodies for dumping in a sealed container or lidded garbage can
• Use that same leaf vacuum, but use the leaf blower feature instead, and send the cicada bodies flying out of your area

As for how long the cicada stench will last, most of the experts out there have estimated that it will go on for about two weeks after all the noise and mating have stopped.