We dreaded the arrival of them. Tolerated them when they were here. I can't say I miss them now that they are gone, but looking back on it I'm glad we were here to experience them.
They were all over the place. Making Grace and her friends squeal on the softball field when they flew into them. All over my tires when I came out of the eye doctor office (can't explain that one). Hanging all over plants around the neighborhood. We were expecting there to be swarms of them that would keep us in the house. There an incredible amount of them, freaking some people out, but at least at our house they weren't overtaking us (though I did have one friend tell me she had so many at her house that at one point her ground was "undulating" with so many crawling across it - ick).
This is a video I took of the sound they made. For weeks the droning noise was constantly in the background. This was taken near the end when it was so loud you heard it not only outside but also in the house with the doors and windows closed. It was very much like an alien invasion movie was playing outside.
But after a couple months of no-bug silence, the last phase of the cicadas have shown up. All of a sudden these dead branches started appearing in trees around town (if you enlarge the second photo below you can see them better). I thought it was stress on the trees from the heat wave we had a few weeks ago, but it's apparently where the females had laid eggs in the trees. The babies are now dropping down to bury themselves into the ground to wait out the next 17 years until they once again emerge to mate, lay eggs and die again.
It was creepy and weird but utterly fascinating, and something to talk about in 17 years when we get ready to see them again.
