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Gina Biondo's avatar

We have cicadas every year in Texas and they do scream like Swifties at a concert. They are butt ugly bugs. The phot of you and Bain is beyond adorable.

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chichi robado's avatar

Is this what you mean? It’s the only one I could find that actually was like screaming. Court I, Court II, Court III scroll down for recordings. https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/magicicada-septendecim-linnaeus-1758-aka-linnaeuss-17-year-cicada/

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Regina Mazzuca's avatar

I love your writing! Thank you for sharing it!!

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Kim Cusato's avatar

I think that is the lifecycle of the vast majority of species on earth. We “higher lifeforms” like to think we lend some aesthetics to the world, but we are probably doing it more harm than good.

If only we could be more like dolphins….

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Marjorie J. Birch's avatar

To me, except for the crescendo and diminuendo (going louder and softer), cicadas always sounded like something being fried in really crackly grease.

I used to call cicada shells "bug ghosts."

Sleep, fuck, and die. Makes me think of Mennonites. (Except they work, fuck, and die.) Years ago, I helped typeset (from SCRATCH) an entire book dedicated to the history of dead Amish and Mennonites. ) Pages upon pages of people with the same names, the same number of children with the same names, and these same names would marry other same names... I was convinced that I was typing the same page over and over. Desperate to find something, anything interesting about this chore., I figured out that the reason the eleven or twelve children had the same middle initial was because traditionally, they were given the mother's maiden name as their middle name.

SO. I waited for someone named Abraham R. Martin to marry an Elizabeth Z. Martin and my patience was rewarded. A Martin married a Martin and yes! one of their children was named Martin Martin Martin. Or Martin cubed.

Sort of related -- there's something cruel about gardening with annual flowers. Annuals are meant to bloom, set seed, and die -- but you get a longer flowering time if you pinch off the faded blooms. Then the plant has to start all over again, bloom, try to set seed but O NO! It's the pinchy Sky Thumb & Index Finger! Curses!

And so, a successful flowerbed is just an array of extremely frustrated plants.

I hope you'all are not in the vicinity of vicious tornadoes.

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Lisa's avatar

Hilarious! Likening their noise to Swifties screaming is A-plus!!!

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May 9, 2024
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Terry Hickman's avatar

So it's two subspecies (?) that every TV talking head is losing their mind about these days? And I'll out-nerd you here, although I may be wrong - but I thought these were two 17-year cicada populations whose emergences just happen to mathematically coincide this year?

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