Cicada Symphony ...

I woke up this morning to the lilting choirs of the beady, red-eyed, transparent-winged, large, black, ugly cicadas. Their lingering mating song is like constant background static or white noise that invades our everyday lives to mask individual sounds around us. I did not hear the usual cooing of the morning dove, or the petulant mimic of the mocking bird. There was no buzzing of the bumblebee in the flower garden, since the accustomed sounds of nature have faded to the background in reverence of the long-anticipated symphony. Less than 30 days and this will be a forgotten memory, just a nuisance to we humans, but to many of nature’s predators, cicadas are a once-in-seventeen-year delicacy and will have served a useful purpose in the life cycle of our planet. So if you’re lucky enough to be in the audience of this year’s concert, listen as I do, with a new awareness and respect to the extraordinary performance of the millions of emerging cicadas.

- posted by rosemary @ 6:37 AM