Cicada Wars

Collin and Tim LOVE cicadas. Every fall, they go searching for the empty shells that were shed by the the noisy things. In Illinois, they found hundreds of them and kept them in an old lunch box.

One day, I found Collin (then about 10 years old) out in our driveway with all his army men, cowboys and Indians lined up in ranks. They were all on the same side, marching to defend Planet Earth against rows and rows of hollow cicadas. I wish I had taken a picture of that scene.

I remember collecting them when I was a kid, too. I think I must have taken every cicada shell in that tree - I remember my Dad on the ground with a big jar, and I climbed higher and higher, dropping the shells to my Daddy. Maybe that's why it didn't surprise me too much to find an old lunch box packed with cicada shells when we moved last December. They couldn't come with us to Texas, though - they didn't pass inspection. Many of them were missing some legs, and more than a few were crushed. I didn't think they could take the rigors of being deployed, so they were given an honorable discharge...and surreptitiously disposed of, along with their lunch box.

The boys were delighted to find cicada shells here in Texas, too, and they're a little bigger than the ones in Illinois. I was surprised they didn't go to war this year. I guess there weren't enough cicadas to be considered a threat to Planet Earth. Good thing, too - I don't think all of the human troops were transferred to Texas, either.