Nature is insane. If you were to submit to a book publisher a concept of a bug that emerged from the ground only every 17 years, was born, went through its life cycle, and then died in only a few weeks they wouldn’t place your bizarre work in fiction or science fiction, but fantasy.

My brother and his friend were joking about what other great mysteries lie buried beneath the Earth’s ground. Why not dragons or some other type of crazy mythical creature with a shelf life of 3,573 years underground? Who are we to say our stone age ancestors were wrong with their ideas of crazy creatures.

The cicada serenade sure does take me back. There are several broods that impact various geography throughout the globe. Their appearance can range in periodicity from 1-17 years or at least so I’ve read. 17 years ago I wasn’t even living in America so I missed this brood’s last ride.

One of my childhood houses backed up against an agricultural preserve with a ton of woods. The serenade would last for weeks and there were probably millions of them back there, nostalgia. I live in the city now so I can hear them but they’re a good ways off into the suburbs where there are more trees.

So I can’t really hear them loudly, the ones that were born in the apartment courtyard all emerged and seemed to all die very quickly. The apartment groundskeepers came in and swept out all their corpses and none have emerged since so I guess in my area the journey is over for this brood as a failure. Although if that was the case, how did they get into the ground here locally 17 years ago? Not sure.

I guess that’s the attrition rate inherent in any of nature’s concepts whether it be bugs or turtles or rabbits. I wonder how many of this brood gets to fulfill their purpose and how many die out first? It’s all crazy. But also, I sure am glad my dog has decided that while she likes to sniff the cicadas, she didn’t desire to eat them.