Imagine There's An Image

My buddy Paul F and I stepped outside at work this afternoon to check on the Cicada situation and were Shocked and Awed by (a) how very, very loud the bugs were today and (2) how they were literally all over the place.

Cicadas were shagging anywhere and everywhere, on the sidewalk, in the parking lot, on the picnic table, in the grass, and in most of the trees. But I posted enough of the fornicating photos yesterday, so no more homopteran hedonism for this blog!

There were lots of "singles" too, mostly hanging out on tree branches. I guess they were either Looking for Love or resting Afterwards?

Paul and I couldn't help ourselves - we went into 12-year-old mode, shaking some of the more populous branches to launch mini-swarms of cicadas across the parking lot. These bugs are really fun to watch - they are terrible fliers and even worse at coming back to earth. They seem to be like drunken pilots coming in for landings, often tumbling on touchdown.

The cicada singing the first few days was basically a whirring noise - rather like the constant background noise you'd hear on the bridge of the Enterprise on the original Star Trek series. It's loud, but not painfully so, and rather pleasant. After a while, you hardly notice.

But as of yesterday, an ear-piercing, high-pitched trilling component has been added on top of the whirring background chorus. Same thing today, but even louder. The trilling varies in loudness in an orchestrated, sinusoidal sort of way. Amazing.

Here's a little Cicada trivia to leave you with today: Cicada choruses can be as loud as 106 decibels. That's louder than a jackhammer, and slightly quieter than a rock concert. No wonder my ears hurt!