When I retired I thought that there would be time to do all the things that I wasn’t able to do when working. Funny thing about time, there never seems to be enough of it! But, I have found that sometimes we must stop or our lives will pick up speed and become like a merry-go-round that goes too fast!
Job 37:14 says, “Listen to this, Job; Stand still and consider the wonders of God.” Sometimes I must do this to keep my life in perspective. There is so much to consider when we look at the wonders of God.
When I “stand still” I return to looking at birds and when I look at birds, I observe all the other things that are in nature. One thing that I have observed over the past couple of weeks is the Cicadas! They seem to be getting louder and louder whether it is daytime or nighttime. Since I live in town surrounded by lots of trees, I had noticed that there was an abundance of them this summer!
My grands have been fascinated with the skins that these insects leave behind on the sidewalks and almost anywhere you look these days. They have collections of these shed skins in various sizes that they have gathered in little Tupperware bowls. So when my grands get interested in something, I become interested, too.
I have taken a closer look at these bugs the past week so that I could learn more about them, so I could be the “wise” MiMi who knew something cool about these bugs. So, I will share with you some of the bits of knowledge that I have learned. One of the first things that I learned is that these bugs are not actually “Locusts”. They are called Cicadas. They are totally different insects. Their looks AND their behavior are different. I always wondered if they were locusts why they didn’t eat away all the vegetation in their path just like they did when Moses called them out as one of the plagues of Egypt.
The locusts of the plagues are a type of Grasshopper. On the website cicadamania.com there is a quote from Pehr Kalm from 1756: “By the Englishmen here they are called Locusts and by the Swedes living here, they have gotten the name Grasshoppers. In Latin, they could be called Cicada.” But, on this website they say, “Cicadas are indeed not Locusts, Grasshoppers or Flies.”
When you look at pictures of actual Locust and Cicadas you can immediately see the difference. “True Locusts have HUGE rear legs for hopping, long antennae, and relatively long bodies. Locusts chew the plants they consume, while Magicicadas suck fluids from trees.”
You will quickly learn the difference if they come to our town if all the plants have been stripped bare of anything green that they can find to eat! So, I am very glad that what we have are “Cicadas” that they are not “Locusts.”
There is also something interesting about how often we see Cicadas. On dictionary.com the name Periodical Cicada is given because cicadas do not necessarily emerge each summer, but generally appear in cycles of 13 or 17 years. Some are called Annual Cicadas because they emerge annually. These cicadas go underground for a period of time and they emerge to mate. It is the male Cicada that makes the shrill sound that we hear. He is vibrating the membranes on the underside of his abdomen.
This summer has been one of the largest emergences of the 17 year - Periodic Cicada and the numbers have been in the billions! This group has been labeled Brood X (like the Roman numeral) because of its large numbers.
One interesting fact is that local songbirds eat Cicadas. Chickadees, Bluebirds, Mockingbirds and Cardinals are taking advantage of the abundance of Cicadas this summer and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center scientists are eager to study them as we “Look at the birds of the air…” Matthew 6:26.
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