Breezy and clear. A cicada lands on the chair beside me and emits a brief, mechanical purr, red eyes glowing like the lights on an ambulance, before flying directly into a railing, dropping to the floor and relaunching into the yard.
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“A cicada lands on the chair beside me and emits a brief, mechanical purr, red eyes glowing like the lights on an ambulance, ” Yes! and all your recent morning offerings that include the sight and sounds of cicadas bring me back to my year in 6th grade in Cincinnati, when the crossing guards (all boys of course ca 1956) on the way to school would use their stop/go paddles to whack them out of the air, as they tried to propel them toward the girls, and the sidewalks in front of the school were covered with their smashed bodies. There was no way to avoid them. And the open windows (no air conditioning back then) let in the sound of their loud loud buzzing so the teachers had trouble making themselves heard.
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Great memories. Brood XIV would’ve had an aboveground year in ’57, but I first encountered these guys in 1974, when I was eight. My brothers and I made collections of the shells for our natural history museum, but I don’t remember much else other than just finding them deliciously creepy. We had an Amish family stop up for a hike just as they were emerging, and it was fun watching the children get all excited and collect them in their hats.