Thursday, July 12, 2012

The Sound of Summer

We were on our daily walk today and Mac stopped and said, "Listen." It was very quiet, but in the background you could hear  Cicadas one of our favorite summer  sounds. It has to be pretty warm for them to be making noise and I can testify to how hot it was this morning.
 The name cicada is derived from the Latin for tree cricket, but they're not crickets.    They're also called locusts, you know, as in 17 year locusts, but they're not a locust either.
Our  southern cicadas are not the 17 year cicada, but rather an annual one, Tibicen.  It's also known as a jar fly (that's what my Grandfather always called them) or a dog day cicada because you're more apt to hear them in late July or August, the dog days.
They don't bite, but they're rather scary looking, at least to me.  Around the world people eat them and consider them a delicacy, particularly the females which are  meatier.   Now I've eaten chocolate covered ants and could probably eat a crispy grasshopper, but I draw the line at cicadas.

3 comments:

  1. The first time I remember hearing about cicadas was at school reading a set book, My Family and other Animals by Gerald Durrell, based in Corfu. Funny how that's stuck with me!

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  3. I've never heard of cicadas. The sound of our summer is raindrops pitter pattering against the window pane.

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