My Boring Blog

So, it's cicada season here. I don't think Australia has 17-year cicadas, so we're not totally inundated, but what these lack in quantity they make up for in size.

The major influx started a few days ago. In three days, we've collected nearly 200 shells, because there were so many on the house they were creeping us out. Hubby got this slightly twisted idea to line them all up, so now we have an empty army. There's some more pics at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelcat/

196 soldiers in This Bug's Army.

Slightly older pics show cicadas hatching, and what our local ones look like - we have Orange Drummers, a very large, very loud cicada. They seem to average just over 2" long.

(graphic cicada carnage warning!)

What's interesting is that they're a delicacy to the local parrots. I figure it has to be parrots, because I'm finding lots of cicada corpses with heads and abdomens neatly bitten off, only the leggy bit and wings remain. Only the parrots have the claw dexterity to pull that off!

Cicadas are arthropods, as are shrimp (shrimp with wings!), and they're supposed to be pretty tasty. I can't get past that American cultural taboo though. Ugh.

In other news, it's hot. Really Hot. Really Friggin Too Bloody Hot!!! How does 108 degrees Fahrenheit sound? Yea, "but it's a dry heat" but I'll tell you, anything over about 95 is HOTHOTHOT no matter how dry. This is stick-a-hairdryer-in-your-face-on-high kind of hot. Turn the oven on high and stick your head inside hot. I don't doubt for a second that I could really, truly cook an egg on our sidewalk (driveway). I'd even try it just to take pics and prove it, but it'd attract ants and the cicada bodies are doing quite enough of that already!