Dog days

Ah yes, the dog days.  I remember the long, hot stretch between Independence Day and the start of school as a bittersweet wild card for my family.  The sweet consisted of afternoons spent in the pool, of day trips to Cape Girardeau or Fort Massac or wherever, of staying up late playing Uno or Pop-o-matic Trouble, of weenie roasts with s'mores and lemonade, of stargazing and bat watches.  On the other hand, the bitter consisted of bad sunburns, of the occasional spanking or family squabble, of long periods of heat followed by waves of violent thunderstorms, of the impending school year and the changes it would bring, of MOSQUITOES!!!  There are times when I wish the gates of hell would open and devour the mosquitoes, but the swallows, the bats, and the house spiders (all of whom I love) live off mosquitoes, so maybe I need to just shut face.  I have a pretty good relationship with most of the insects summer brings out (mosquitoes and red wasps are the exception), but I've always been particularly fond of cicadas.  Today my bow is not a bow, but rather a clip in the shape of a cicada.

TarnavskayaStudio specializes in these insect clips.  Usually they're butterflies, but a couple species of cicada are also available.  The online listing called my particular clip an "olive" cicada, but when I googled those I only got pictures of the annual cicadas that fill the Bootheel's trees every late summer.  Annual cicadas are indeed olive green and brown-black, so I guess "olive" would be a good thing to call them.  My clip is flatter than a flitter, by the way.  Since these are made of cloth that's to be expected, but cicadas have such a stout build IRL that seeing the clip flat is a little weird.

I'm getting a vague Silence of the Lambs vibe with this thing, even though the insects in that movie were moths rather than cicadas.  My bow on that particular day was this one, LOL.

I wonder why my selfies are never in focus???  For the record, the earrings I'm wearing today are flat too.  These are periodical cicadas, which I've never seen IRL.  There's a nymph and an adult. 

JabeboStudio made these, out of recycled cereal boxes, no less!  A wheat Chex logo is visible on the back of the adult.

My family calls cicadas "dry flies" even though they are NOT flies, and some of my old-timer friends call them "locusts" even though they are NOT locusts.  Cicadas start singing around this time of year, and in another month or so the new yearlies will start leaving their husks behind.  I used to collect those, to the considerable chagrin of my parents (a large accumulation of these husks will begin to reek after awhile).  One year I even got one of the adults caught in my hair!  I was about sixteen and had grown out of collecting the husks by then, though I still loved the live insects.  My adolescent self had almost two feet of hair and was in the habit of wearing it loose, and one day this huge cicada swooped low and snagged in my dangling tresses.  Of course he panicked and screamed and flopped around trying to get free, which only made the situation worse.  I spent several minutes grabbing for him and yelling "Hold still, ya dumba$$!" while Daddy watched from the back door and roared with laughter.  The cicada finally tired himself out and I managed to disentangle him, and after he'd rested a bit on my finger he flew away, no worse for wear.  I was left shaking my head in amazement at the situation I'd just been in, and not too long after that I got a haircut.  But yeah, cicadas are special to me.  I love finding the husks even now, I love hearing them sing, I love occasionally finding a nymph and watching it break out of its skin, and I love occasionally finding a live adult and poking gently at it to make it buzz.  I've always loved these alien-like insects, and I hope that love never changes.

Buzzing to all,
RagingMoon1987