This remarkable video is courtesy of "Iowa Todd." He has compressed about an hour of film into 20 seconds of animation. Check out Todd's Flickr photostream here. I'm sure there is a biological reason for the leg drumming on his abdomen as he emerges, but it looks like celebration to me. (Think Roger Daltrey and The Who's "I'm Free" and hum along.)
Seventeen-year cicadas provide the soundtrack to Richard Gilbert's essay, "A Dry Year," in the current issue of Chautauqua (Issue 6, the story and storytelling issue).
The hot, dry weather is almost a character itself in Richard's descriptions of that year in Ohio when he was bound and determined to have a pond built at his family's newly purchased sheep farm. His reflective, direct writing speaks truth to me. In its self-revelation, I learn more about my own self.
I've been seeing empty cicada shells everywhere the last few days -- even stuck on the side of an outdoor garbage can down by the gate. The photo below is one I took of a cicada shell on a pine tree in 2004.
