Buggy Out

It's buggy out there! The main insect this year is the seventeen year cicada. Internet sources say this is the Magicicada Periodical Cicada, Brood IV. This is the first time I've seen these in Kansas, although my youngest brother says he remembers their last hatch. I think they're cute! They don't bite and are small that our usual cicadas, so they are less intimidating. And their color scheme is much more appealing than their kin. I've never seen their numbers, though! They absolutely cover the trunks of trees, are spread out in the tree canopies, and cover the garage doors at night time. When they sing they can be deafening. I have a dB application on my phone, and at work I measured 98 dB at the base of a tree! The occupationally harmful level is 85 dB. It's more of a constant vibration, too, not like the pulsating vibrations of our typical cicadas.

As for other insects like mosquitoes, the population count hasn't been that bad. We've had a wet spring but for some reason they haven't been bad. I have coworkers that say the ticks are bad this year, but we haven't had a problem yet.

The other insects I sketched happened to show up by our night light on the garage and I found them interesting. I took cell phone pictures of all of them for sketching purposes. Live sketch time just hasn't happened lately. I like to email them to our home account and print them off so I can sketch them over lunch hours at my local coffee shop.

I like to journal about these things because this serves as a timestamp for things that happen around here. As soon as the seventeen year hatch began I knew that they'd end up in my journal. Next hatch - I can count the years and see if it was really seventeen years. Mother nature's timing is amazing.