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Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Sweltering Heat brings Bug Monsters with Piercing and Sucking Mouth Parts

As Oakland County simmers in Day 4 of an early season heat wave with temperture hovering in the 90's and many wild creatures slowing their pace, one creature is accelerating activity.Cicadas have emerged from their time underground, time spent maturing and sucking on tree roots. They now cling to tree trunks and sound off with loud and long chain saw like buzzing noises. Translation: "Hey sweet thing, I'm over here!" This 'heat bug'  of summer is hard to spot as they carry on tree top romance, but earlier today as I sat in my rustic arbor sipping iced coffee I spotted something on my old whiskey barrel that  now serves as a potted plant platform: a fresh cicada exoskeleton - with clear evidence of their bulging eyes - still clung to the rough surface.  Skeleton there. No body home!  Had I snooped about earlier I might have spotted the recently emerged cicada  still breaking its way out of its external skelton, streching out nearly transparent wings and setting off into flight and as an adult in a brave new world of heat. That is their way.  But tonight, with summer here, it's time to sleep on the screened porch cot in the season of  heat bugs; for that's my way.

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