Thursday, April 30, 2009

Cold-Hearted Cicada

The feelings of a cold-hearted lover
are like a cicada:
it cries constantly
but never shows its face

Miwa no Sugikado

Found on BibliOdyssey along with a couple of woodcuts by Utamaro. Although we heard them all through the dog days of August, I only once found one, a mature wing-ed one, dead, when I was about 10. I pinned it to an acoustic ceiling tile and it was my bug collection. I'm just back from a visit to Toronto where I unearthed this while planting potatoes in my mother's garden.


Unless someone tells me otherwise I'm calling it a cicada. It still seemed to be in a state of suspended animation but definitely still alive, so I buried it again. It's not due to see the light of day until May 18th by this calculation - E=(19.465-t)/0.5136 - where E is the emergence start date in May and t is the average April temperature.

3 comments:

Q said...

having just watched 'The Return of the 17 Year Cicadas' on Youtube... I think you're correct in your assumption.

Q said...

oops... meant to say what a cool discovery too.

Misshathorn said...

I'm glad that you concur. See if you can find it making it's way up the blue spruce to disrobe in about 3 or 4 weeks.