An Acquired Taste

When I grew up in the Northeast, I knew about 17 year cicadas. The big, ugly, noisy bug appeared every 17 years and were everywhere. I didn't know much about cicadas except that they don't fly really well, crashing into objects and people. They are very large bugs and they make an outrageous amount of noise. But people can put up with ugly noisy bugs once every seventeen years, right?

Then we moved to the midwest and guess what... there are cicadas that happen  every year. They are big and ugly and noisy and they are here every single summer. Sometimes they make so much noise that we can hear them inside the house with all the windows closed and we only sit outdoors in the evenings if we don't mind the constant high pitched shrieking. I do mind, so I don't sit out in the evenings.

But, not everyone dislikes cicadas as much as I do. My dogs love them.

When cicadas die, they tend to just drop out of the trees and we find them on the ground in the morning. My Porties race to grab them and crunch them up like potato chips. I remember a few years ago when Bailey found a live one on the ground and grabbed it. It kept rattling and screaming as Bailey ran around the yard with it in her mouth. She eventually stopped and put it down to study it, only to have Tess grab it and gobble it down.

Now a new generation has discovered the appeal of cicadas. Mackey is quite obsessed with them.

 Autumn is coming and the nights are getting cool. That means that in the morning we can usually find a few cicadas in the yard. Mackey is fast and usually beats the Porties to her new favorite treat.

 Occasionally she finds one with some buzz left and will carry it around until it stops buzzing. Then in a gulp, it's gone.

 Sebastian says, "I don't do bugs."

Smart.