All its problems are over
It is once again the season of flies. In the house. Every time you open the door.
Nasty varmints pert' near drive me crazy. I am often brandishing a purple flyswatter but more often than not, if I succeed in taking out a fly, it's with the edge of my dishtowel.
I am amazingly accurate with my dishtowel so watch out.
But! Also, the Cicada Killer. Outside the house -- as in, right outside the door.
We have lived in our house for eighteen years, come Labor Day weekend.
According to this very blog, for at least twelve summers (because when I first -- and last -- wrote about them, was the first time I noticed them), we have been blessed plagued visited in late July and throughout August, with Cicada Killers.
Here's a conundrum: I hate bugs; I mean, don't get me started. But I love cicadas.
More to the point, I love the sound of them. Every year, just after Mother's Day, I begin listening for the first whine of a cicada.
(I would not go so far as to say that I want one to crawl on me, and have no desire to keep one as a pet, but since they are not interested in that, it is a non-issue.)
Me and my shadow
This time of year -- the dog days of summer, as it were, and here in South Carolina, the dogs are nothing if not foaming at the mouth (as in, it is HOT) -- the cicadas' super-loud, concentrated morning-time busy, buzzy choruses (more sing than wing) thrill me through and through.
I could go on and on about that but, in all honesty and for reasons not entirely clear to me, the post I wrote about this many Augusts ago (linked above) is better than anything I could write about it today.
So please read it.
But unlike that long-ago post, this time I got pictures of our deck littered with cicada bodies.
And according to this short but excellent article on the subject, the Cicada Killers swooping and diving on patrol for hours on end just outside the French doors leading from our kitchen to our pool, are females.
Also according to the article, fierce and scary as they look, they are docile.
All they want is to take the dead cicadas back to their dens and leave the corpses there for their young to feast on at a later time. When they wake up.
Or something like that.
Although the last thing (or near to it) in the world I want is to be stung by any kind of stinging insect, these critters neither bother nor frighten me.
We've fallen and we can't get up
I figure, the bugs have their role to fulfill and they are just doing what God told them to do.
May that be said of all of us.
The children look vaguely alarmed when they see the CKs but I tell them: Just keep moving. They don't want you.
It's poignant to see the CKs struggling, unwilling to let go of their latest inert cicada conquest, to crawl between the deck boards to what I assume is some kind of gathering place below decks.
They can't get through, so cicada remains proliferate on the deck.
(I am assuming that the CKs successfully deposit some of their victims where they intended to, but that is only an assumption so don't bet the farm on it.)
Erica and Audrey and the children were here for hours yesterday, and we were all swimming because if you're going to be outside, it's advisable to be up to your shoulders in cool water.
One intriguing thing about this time of year is how many cicada shells are to be found, both on the ground and clinging to trees and even the side of the house.
Audrey whipped out her phone and learned that the winged cicadas emerge from those dull brown shells (after emerging from underground where they can live for up to seventeen years) that they leave behind.
Belly up
And then they live for two to six weeks. Just long enough to complete a few assigned tasks.
That's the approximate life span of the Cicada Killer, too: a few weeks for males, maybe four weeks for females.
A house fly can do its worst for maybe a month if it avoids my dishtowel.
I don't mean to dwell on death on such a beautiful summer day, but yesterday evening, we lost a family member.
TG's and my brother-in-law (husband of Ruth, TG's only sister) passed away at the age of sixty-three.
Rest in Peace, Johnny.
We will see you in a better day, in eternal summer.
Dr. Peterson: My favorite Canadian and current desktop wallpaper
As Jordan Peterson says: Accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open.
The Pirate adds: Life is too long not to recognize every day how short it is.
And act accordingly.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Tuesday
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