17-Year Cicadas...Enough Already!

About a week ago, when the Brood II Cicadas began showing up around here, it was exciting to see their transformations from nymph to adult.I was snapping photos and was actually hoping I'd be able to find one in the process of 'being born' (aka 'exiting it's exoskeleton). I had captured holes in the ground with nymphs crawling out and up trees.

A couple of days later, I was able to capture a 'birth', and I marveled at the whole process--using adjectives like fascinating, marvelous, miraculous.

Skip ahead a few days until today. I've had it! They are everywhere, literally everywhere in my yard and gardens! Their decomposing exoskeletons line the base of the trees and many still cling to the bark, still in the position they were in prior to the nymphs emerging.

(unmowed weeds in adjacent yard)

And they're LOUD! The males all scream at the same time (day and night, ongoing) and it literally sounds like a spaceship is coming in for a landing. You can hear them when you walk outside. You can even hear them through the walls of the house if it's really quiet inside.The actual bugs themselves are all over every plant and tree and blade of grass around here...and as I was snapping photos I felt something crawling on the back of my leg: yep, a cicada had crawled up under my pants. Yuk!

Live adults line the inside basin of the portable basketball hoop...they cannot seem to find their way out.

I've simply had my fill and would like to request that they return to their holes in the ground from whence they came. But that isn't about to happen...so, I'll have to keep putting up with this slight interruption from 'regular gardening' for a few more weeks, I guess. The idea of hundreds, more like thousands, of these things lying around dead and rotting does not appeal to me! Enough is enough is enough!

Hanging from bottom of bird house...

On my front porch steps in the middle of the day!

On the wall of the front porch

Hanging from the overhang/roof of the front porch, right over the front door! No thank you...I don't want any!

All over the Alliums...

I caught this one swimming in the stream with this frog looking on, apparently unphased. I watched as it finally escaped from the water and climbed out on the rocks.

I've also seen a high number of deformed cicadas. Some only emerge half way from their exoskeleton and just die there. Others have only half-sized, tiny, bent wings and cannot fly, like this one:

Whatever. I'm over 'em. Now, if only they'd go away! I guess it could be another few weeks to a month before that will happen? Gardening is a little different, to say the least. When you come to visit, you will be welcomed...

...but watch your step and look over your shoulder, at least for now :)

Words and photos ©Thanks for today.™, by Jan Huston Doble @ http://www.thanksfor2day.blogspot.com/

Not to be reproduced or re-blogged without express permission of the author.