Cicadas

I have to start this post off by saying I have never heard of cicadas.  In Texas, we had locus.  In the summer we would find their shells stuck to trees and we would play with them.  I had never heard of them staying underground for 13 years and then all coming up to mate.  So, when it started this year we were a little surprised!  Those things are everywhere!  And they are LOUD!  The first day we got back from our trip to Texas I could hear them, but I seriously thought it was someone weed eating.  It never stopped, but I just thought it was a good day to work in the yard and lots of people were doing it.

Of course, this whole thing is right up Lyric's alley! She loves them!  The other night we set out to see how many shells we could find.

 Story was the spotter and Cadence, Lyric and I were the picker uppers.  There was noway Story was touching one of their shells!

 The shells and live cicadas were covering our bushes.

 Devon, who is terrified of anything that flies, was helping Cadence look in the bushes.  There were too many live ones for him.  He was keeping his distance.

 By the end, we had quite a collection.

 Cadence showing me one of her finds.

 Lyric was telling Cadence how proud she was that she overcame her fear and was helping pick up the shells.

 The bushes were full of them!

 We saw these two mating.

 We decided to collect a few live ones in our butterfly house for observation.

 Lyric and I did some reading on the internet to try to learn about the fascinating little creatures.  Very interesting!

We also found this really cute video: