The Day of the Cicada

Lately we've been finding cicada shells on our pine trees, which is a completely delightful discovery for the kids (see picture at right) but I didn't know enough about the insects to tell them why. Well, now, I do, because we declared yesterday The Day of the Cicada.

On our morning walk we found a beautiful dead specimen, which of course we brought home and drew in our nature notebooks. I'm always surprised at the level of detail the kids use in their drawings (and their pictures make me chuckle, too. See the pic below of V-Man's Evil Cicada). Then we spent a while on this site at National Geographic learning about cicadas. One of the more interesting facts is that some of them have a 17-year life cycle, but they spend most of it underground, emerging at last to shed their skin one last time on a nearby plant.

After completing the drawings, we did a reconnaissance mission in our backyard and found no less than four cicada shells on our trees.

Nature is everywhere -- you just have to look!