(I like this title, because it describes my life on many levels. Read into it what you will...)
Do you have cicadas at your house?
I had never heard of them until we moved East, but now their rattling mating call has become synonymous with August. During the hottest, most unbearable days of summer, they absolutely shake the trees in our yard with the most deafening insect sound. But wait! It gets even better! They also shed, leaving entire exoskeletons for delighted ten-year-old boys (and their horrified mothers and sisters) to find.
Last week Jake collected a whole bucketful and spent an entire morning with a hot glue gun creating his own Dead Cicada Fight Club.
Is there a Scout badge for this?
Check out the footage below to enjoy this "beautiful noise"...
24 comments:
I think cicadas are an East coast thing?
Which you'll have to show me when I come, because I think that there is a job around the corner and NOW we can resume our trip planning.
That is crazy! My boys would be in HEAVEN! Every so often we get a giant dead beetle or two on our front porch. They then get completely pulled apart, disected, glued. Awesome.
Scout badge: Naturalist in Webelos. OR an elective in Bears (Arrow point trail electives in Nature Crafts or Collecting Things)
How scarey is it that I know that???? Sick, I know.
I MISS THE EAST COAST!
Your video doesn't do the noise justice.(But your yard is lovely and lush!) It is incredibly loud. 24 hours a day. It never stops. We had west coast friends come out with the plan to camp for 2 weeks while they were site-seeing. They made it about 3 hours the first night and found a hotel at 2 in the morning because it was insanely loud! They hotel hopped the rest of the trip.
I like the craft project. At least he isn't eating them. They are edible you know...
Not my yard in the video...I wish I had hostas like that. But all the deer would eat them!
And, yes...I told the kids if we lived in China, we would be eating cicada-kabobs!
I love Jake and his summer bugs.
I've always hated cicadas! I've dealt with them just about every place I've lived! Fortunately in the Phoenix area we only get them around every five or seven years, but then there is all those cricketts!
Nasty. LOVE how he arranged those things. Creepy and creative.
We don't have many cicadas here in my neck of the woods but we don't have fireflies either. It is a fair trade off. We love visiting my parents in Chicago in the summer to see the fireflies.
i have heard about those. now i have "heard them". we didn't get far enough east in michigan to experience them. i'll take the bull frogs on a spring night over that any day!
and since they are hugely an east coast thing, you have to be pretentious and insist they be called si-KAH-duhs and not si-KAY-duhs. sort of like insisting your name be pronounced with the same sort of schwa sound.
i love his glued set-up. that is hilarious.
just an fyi to everyone...they are not just an east coast thing. the first time i encountered them was when we were living in the south - Kentucky. now we live in arizona and this year they are LOUD and EVERYWHERE. i secretly love it. my kids love to find the exoskeletons on the block walls. summer fun!
I've heard them in Provence and DC but I have never seen an artistic display. Maybe he will be a museum curator.
Jake...that is awesome!!! We are all so impressed and Byron wants you in his Science class!! He did a bug collection once when he was your age...but he wasn't smart enough to arrange them like you did!! Awesome.
Only Shakey Jake (or Chase or McKay...) would concoct a fight club scene with the ugly beasts. That is absolutely hilarious.
We have them here. I like the sound, but hate seeing the skeletons on the ground. Creeps me out. They're too dang big.
Eek and yuck! We have cicadas here in Vegas and I don't mind their rattling, but I HATE those exoskeletons - gross! Horrified is the right word to describe my feelings of seeing those, especiallly if they were in my house!
Holy cow! Are those real bugs? gross. ONly a boy would do that. I have heard the cicadas and you do have to yell to talk over them. I have never heard them here in the west, only on the east coast. Amazing.
Seriously... those are way too big. That totally freaks me out. Way to go Jake! No fear.
I remember the noise of cicadas in North Carolina. Once you notice the noise, it really is deafening! Those exoskeletons always used to freak me out! They still look alive.
Yikes, that would freak me out a bit. No cicadas here, just crickets! I think Jake has quite a talent for setting up bugs skeletons, pretty cool!
i'm not sure if they are the same bugs...but, when we were in thailand, they would start chirping if it was going to rain, which it did the whole time we were there...and it was deafening!!! i'm glad youre' back in the blog world!
Yay!! Comments are back!!
I love that Annemarie knew exactly which scout badges to direct you to.
I sent you an e-mail with my original comment...maybe it was just my computer that wouldn't show the comment option?
I'd heard them when I went to visit my sister in Illinois, but never seen one. That is so many levels of gross!
That is the best thing I've seen in a LONG time. What a cool kid. :)
OK those are nasty and HUGE!!! I am impressed with Jake's glue gun skills and bravery. Those are givin' me the whillies!
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