The Cicada Chronicles

Today, as I was sitting at my desk, chanting yoga sutras in Sanskrit on the phone with my teacher in San Francisco, I was looking out the window at small birds flying by periodically.

No, not birds, but cicadas. Large enough to be mistaken for birds. Flying with a sense of purpose, just like a bird. A wing span of signifcant breadth and a body shaped like a small torpedo. Zooming from left to right across my view.

As if chanting Sanskrit long-distance wasn't odd enough.

(By the way, thanks to Joan for giving a title to these posts.)

Postcript: a frightening moment as a flying object just peered in the window. Relief: it was just a moth.

Comments

FairyGodKnitter said…
When you are okay about any type of moth being around, you are clearly near the edge. When will these cicadas fly off? Do they or do they just start dying off in bushel fulls, making it hard to drive the streets?
Janet said…
I agree. I can hardly look at Cara's posts about the Wing of the Moth shawl. And no, they don't fly off. I'm fuzzy on the details, but I'm guessing that after mating, there's some, shall we say, attrition of the population, and then the females crawl back into the ground for another 17 years? I'll have to investigate it.