Live Cicada!

Perhaps you think that the use of an exclamation point is unwarranted, but for me, finding a live cicada is a big deal, since it's been years since I last found one. I find plenty of shed skins on the trees, and the occasional dead adult, but the ants always seem to get to their corpses before I do, so I'm left with hollow fragments at best.

This one was live, and to prove it, I made a short video, since the adults don't live very long after metamorphosis. They spend up to 17 years in the ground, depending on the species, only to live for a mere 48 hours after "growing up." What a life.

While I'm not an expert on cicadas (I'm vastly more knowledgeable about spiders), so I can't tell you what species this one is, but I can tell you at least that it is a true cicada (family Cicadidae), as opposed to a hairy cicada (family Tettigarctidae).

Many people refer to all insects, and even all terrestrial arthropods, as "bugs" in common parlance. This isn't accurate, but it is in the case of cicadas, which are "true bugs," as they belong to the order Hemiptera. Call these things "bugs" to your heart's content, because no entomologist can argue with that! The order Hemiptera, incidentally, also includes stink bugs, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, and water striders.

Maybe I'll get lucky, and find more of these bugs. I know I get plenty of them every year, since I hear them, this has simply been the first live one that I've found in sixteen years!