Day 166
I should have taken the time, earlier in my day, when my mind was full of things to write about … because now I am coming up like I’m the Sahara Desert … quite dry!
We had 3 thunderstorms roll through last night and with those storms cooler air. Finally! Respite! Though muggy today, it has cooled down considerably (so, this is what 73 degrees feels like!) … and it is LOVELY!
The air is cool, it smells fresh, there is a light, yummy breeze … makes me wish I had a bed to climb into!
I’ve opened up the windows and turned off the fans. There are no planes even. That, in itself, is remarkable. I can hear distant traffic but it almost sounds like waves … it is wonderful and blissfully quiet.
Blissfully quiet except for the cicadas that are serenading the neighborhood. They are noisy buggers but in a pleasant sort of way. I don’t mind that “noise/sound” (I actually kind of like it) as it’s nature’s music. They are singing or chirping or whatever it is that they are doing … and it’s peaceful and nice.
I do know that people call them locusts but they are not related to that grasshopper family but are more akin to leaf-hoppers. If you don’t know what a cicada looks like google them … they have big, heavy bodies and large folded, veined wings (think folded-wing dragonflies w/fat, long, crunchy bumblebee bodies). Their eyes are set far apart (like horses) and they are kind of iridescent in a teal/black and purple sort of way. They are kind of like the bug of the 80’s with their color combos!
The males are the songsters … using their abdomens in an accordian-like manner squeezing the songs out to hopefully entice the local lady-friend cicadas to mate.
My friend, Sue, had a chocolate lab named Frango (Frango mints are big in Chicago, so hence the name) … Frango LOVED cicadas. I still laugh at the stories told of that dog grabbing those bugs out of the air, mid-flight, letting them buzz around in her mouth, puffing out her jowls, before munching them into oblivion … never to be seen again. Well, not until she puked them back up in a gooey iridescent mess – wings and all! Ew!
In any case … I like cicadas. Not to EAT but to listen to because, to me, the cicada serenade is the sound of summer.