24 July 2013

My first cicada

Last night as I curled up in bed to send an email before going to sleep, I was abruptly and unceremoniously dive-bombed by what appeared to be a small green tarantula-helicopter-eagle-scarab with giant buzzing wasp-harpy wings. Not that I’m anti-insect. I’m totally cool with giant insects. Like this moth that decided that showers are AWESOME and flew into the bathroom to join me as I was washing my hair:



Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the only shower that the moth ever got to take.

But this green creature was something else entirely. For a start, it sounded like a small airplane, and when it ran into my head it flew with sufficient velocity and force to make an impact. No insect should be big enough to be able to do that. So I got a jar, waited till it had landed, and I captured it. I gazed upon this monstrous ghastly beast with its huge bulbous eyes and its maggoty underbelly, and decided that it was probably some mystery species of the jungle, perhaps found only here. Maybe deadly.

Here is what it looked like:



From below:



To those of you with a discerning eye, you might notice that this is not unfamiliar. In fact, if you have spent time on the East Coast, you might find this to be all too familiar. I googled “giant green flying insect tropics” expecting to find hits of “Green Venom Junglebug” or perhaps “Emerald Wasp-Wing Bloodsucker”, and as I searched through the hits I began to realize with a growing sense of disillusionment that the ones that bore the most startlingly similar resemblance to my creepy find………. were cicadas.

And so that is the story of how I was completely terrified by a cicada.

It would seem that despite their widespread presence in the US, I nevertheless had to come all the way to Costa Rica to learn what a cicada was. And from this broadening experience, I have to say: I do not think I will ever learn to love them.

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