Silence

The cicadas are finally silent.  They must have finished what they were born to do.  For the past few weeks I have listening to their loud and constant chirping outside every window in my house.  I was just reading that their chirps can reach 120 decibels.  That's loud. 

Most of the time you can't see them up in the tree but the other day I managed to get a few photos of the ugly little bugs.  They were about 2 to 2 1/2" long and fat looking.  I was surpised by their rusty orange color.  I guess I expected them to just be brown and camoflauged into the tree.

There's some really cool information about them on Wikipedia which I won't go into but here are a few interesting facts.  The life cycle of a southern cicada is 13 years.  They begin as an egg laid in the barch of a tree twig.  From there, they hatch and drop to the ground, burrowing into the earth up to 8 1/2 feet.  In 13 years they come up out of the ground, mate, and die a short time later.

Wow!