Them! THEM!
This just in:
Gigantic insect swarm incoming.
OMG that's so awesome.
I think I remember - just barely - the last mass cicada swarm. At least that's what I'm guessing it was. by arrangement with my parents, I was spending two weeks in Arizona with their friend Hilde. She taught me lost-wax carving while I was there. It was high summer, hot and dry, with sudden heavy thunderstorms that rolled across the desert like herds of sky buffalo. You could see them coming for miles out.
And the cicadas were everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
I loved them, as only a horribly-wierd ten-year-old (ten? I'm not sure how old I was. Logically, it should have been 17 + [some other brood number], but I don't remember precisely. are there ten-year swarms?) can love gigantic singing, crawling, non-biting insects. This was long before I was exposed to the Nausicaa* mangas in high school.
Some people call cicada calls shrill, but I remember them as droning and restful, though loud. But then again, I was the kid who couldn't fall asleep without the susurrus from the freeway (just far enough away that it sounded like a river) coming in her bedroom window.
We'll see when they emerge, I guess.
*Heh - by some odd coincidence, I am re-reading the Nausicaa stuff now. Joseph (who had never read them, or really any sort of comic book growing up) thinks they're brilliant, and so they are. even for twenty-year old comics, nothing about them is dated or unfashionable - they're still just as good as I remember.
Gigantic insect swarm incoming.
OMG that's so awesome.
I think I remember - just barely - the last mass cicada swarm. At least that's what I'm guessing it was. by arrangement with my parents, I was spending two weeks in Arizona with their friend Hilde. She taught me lost-wax carving while I was there. It was high summer, hot and dry, with sudden heavy thunderstorms that rolled across the desert like herds of sky buffalo. You could see them coming for miles out.
And the cicadas were everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
I loved them, as only a horribly-wierd ten-year-old (ten? I'm not sure how old I was. Logically, it should have been 17 + [some other brood number], but I don't remember precisely. are there ten-year swarms?) can love gigantic singing, crawling, non-biting insects. This was long before I was exposed to the Nausicaa* mangas in high school.
Some people call cicada calls shrill, but I remember them as droning and restful, though loud. But then again, I was the kid who couldn't fall asleep without the susurrus from the freeway (just far enough away that it sounded like a river) coming in her bedroom window.
We'll see when they emerge, I guess.
*Heh - by some odd coincidence, I am re-reading the Nausicaa stuff now. Joseph (who had never read them, or really any sort of comic book growing up) thinks they're brilliant, and so they are. even for twenty-year old comics, nothing about them is dated or unfashionable - they're still just as good as I remember.