"If Cicadas sing in early morn, it is good for growing corn;
if Cicadas sing all day, it is time to gather hay;
if Cicadas sing at noon, it will be hot enough to swoon."
Well, it's cicada time again. I can't believe that 17 years have gone by already. Luckily, we don't have to experience these creatures all that often. This is the fourth time they have come around since I have been alive. I was born in 1954, and they were here in 1956, 1973, 1990, and now 2007. The next time they come around will be 2024 and I will be 70 years old. Yikes!
I thought being out here in the far suburbs that we would escape these creepy and noisy things, and last time they came out we had just moved here and since this had all been farmland and very few trees, we didn't see too many of these red-eyed insects. But in the past twenty years, trees have grown and there is much more foliage, and more cicadas. However, they are not as many in numbers as these poor people have who live more towards the city. If I came outside and saw this, I would go back in and not come back out again till the last one of them was gone. The photo itself gives me the jeebies.
Some of the area forest preserves are filled with their shrill "singing" and can almost be deafening in some places.
While they are creepy and make me shiver, I also feel sorry for the poor things. They have such an incredibly short time in the sun before dropping to the earth to burrow underground to being another 17 years of sleep.
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