Two young children live next door and often come over to help me in the garden. I've been teaching them about fruits, vegetables, weeds and bugs. They like my honeybees and REALLY like the purple green beans and cucumbers. The other night, I was looking for the kids to show them this cool addition to the garden. It was a cicada. About 1.5" long (including wings), this green bug looks more frightening than anything. She was stuck to the inside of the barbeque cover. No kids around, so I grabbed my phone and took this photo as quickly as I could.
It was a curious find as one usually hears cicadas before seeing them. The sound they make is annoying. Some say like an overhead power line. I call it screeching. Wikipedia has an audio track https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada
We finished our fish; washed up the dishes and went to put the cover back on the barbeque. The bug was still there – obviously not in a hurry. So we left her to fly away overnight. The phone camera was witness to her presence.
Come think of it, maybe it is a good thing the kids weren't around. A cicada is one of those bugs you can capture then release it in the face of your younger sibling. When you're nine-years-old, that's pretty funny.
