Thursday, April 25, 2013

Quit Bugging Me! A Cicada Story

Note:  If you don't know what a Cicada is, please check out this Wiki article.  It will explain a lot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada

When Northerners come down to Florida for the first time, the thing that catches their attention pretty quickly is the number of bugs that are flying around.  And not just flying around, but crawling inside, outside, and all over the place.  Some are bad, some are good, and some are just plain annoying. 

In older times, the "song of the South," was the "song" of the Cicada.  When you have a number of them singing together it is unbelievably loud.  As in, up to 120 decibels loud. 

Cicadas go through a series of changes in their life cycle.  Namely they shed their exoskeleton so they can change into a bug with wings.  Being in the South, I find the shells all the time.  However, I had never seen one emerge from its shell.  That is, until now.

As I was walking the dog up to a favorite tree of his, I noticed something on the oak tree.  And there it was.  A Cicada was emerging from it's shell.  I was only able to get one picture since all this happened so quickly. 


As I was trying to hold it up to get a better picture, it crawled out of its shell, and fell.  But it was neat to see something like this.  I only wish I was able to get more pictures. 

No comments:

Post a Comment