Cicada Attack!

Well, the cicada event is winding down, but they are still plenty loud out by where I work.

Our "campus" has a lot of acreage--the "back forty," as it's affectionately known around our parts--and there is a walking trail that winds through woods and meadows that has become prime cicada-watching territory. During the height of the invasion, you could stroll back on the trail and see them in the hundreds, maybe even the thousands, affixed to tree limbs and singing in a deafening cacophony. Since I didn't get back there with a camera until a few days ago, you'll have to take my word for it. By the time I took these pictures, the best was over:





Maybe the weirdest part about this is the assemblage of little cicada carcasses or husks or--I'm sure one of my biology major pals will have the correct word... Lee?--carapaces? clinging to leaves of bushes that are right next to bushes teeming with very much alive and chirping cicada hordes. Are the husks from their emergence? Or is that what happens to them when they die? At any rate, it's way cool.



The only real downside to these neato bugs is that they are not very good fliers. They bumble along, their flight paths seemingly random and arbitrary. And they tend to bump into things. Such as heads. And car windshields. Ah well.

As I said in my previous post about them... I'm going to miss them when they are gone. The world will seem so... well... quiet.