It’s my nightly custom to get the bird out of his cage and take him to his play gym in my office. Fill a dish with some snacks for him. Fire up the computer and prepare to settle in for a while. I reach across my desk to turn on the lamp. As I’m reaching, I happen to look down and see this.
I nearly jump out of my skin. There is a 2-inch-long bug on my desk, left for me by my scientifically curious girlfriend. Uhhh, thanks honey. Apparently, she’d found it on the sidewalk outside the house today when my mother was dropping off some things she’d borrowed. Mel was excited by her find but mom thought she was strange.
After deciding the thing wasn’t going to reanimate I took its picture. Then I looked it up and found out it leads a pretty interesting life… The females die after laying eggs and the nymphs live under ground until adulthood – anywhere from 2 to 17(!) years depending on the species.
As I write this, Mel is taking photos of it with the computer microscope I got her for her birthday. Perhaps I’ll post those later.
I was re-caulking the roof of our screen porch this weekend and found one of those up there!<br><br>Cicadas are all over here, and if they start up their horrid noise before 10:00am, you know the day’s going to be a scorcher…<br><br>anyway, the dude I found had apparently fried up there. nasty-looking.
Eeuuuwwww!<br>
What a cool girl friend. I’ve never seen a cicada in the flesh before. We don’t seem to have them out here.
Okay, your girlfriend is quite strange.<br><br>I was about too post that she and Chari would get a long well, with keep dead creatures around the office, but I see she has beatten me here!