Aaaaahhhhhhhh!!! I can’t take it any more. Shut the fuck up.
They’re almost as annoying as I am. But at least when I shead my carapace I deposit it in the proper recepticle. And I do shut up at some point. Shut up!!!
And I hear him–outside my bedroom window for the past 20+ nights.
Chirp, chirp, chirp. Isn’t there a formula for determining the temperature based on the number of chirps per minute? Know what? I don’t fucking care. I just want the goddamn chirpy SOB to shut up. Or for the weather to cool down enough so I can slam down the window and Mr. Chirpy McSixlegs can do whatever he does (die, reproduce, burrow into the soil, ???) for the next 9 months.
I once had a chuck-wills-widow (southern version of the whip-poor-will) singing out in the field near my old home-they sing LOUD and they sing all night LONG sometimes. I got so annoyed one night that I went out there to scare it away-I almost tripped over it and it flew up and almost clawed my eyes out, then flew off. Never heard it again.
Fast forward a few years and I (very long story) had completely changed my attitude towards many things, wildlife in particular (lame description of something complicated, but I digress). One night it (or another one) started up again and I just let it serenade me to sleep. The problem isn’t the bugs, it’s you.
I just noticed that the crickets outside my window (no cicadas here) are slightly out of time with each other and keep going in and out of synch. Sounds like a Steve Reich composition.
I’m a big fan of cicadas. What I find especially interesting is the *very * different sounds that the different species make. This page contains sound files for a number of species.
Ok, as background noise, they sound like summer. I’d probably be confused without them. But when they take up residence next to your window ALL NIGHT LONG…
And when you’ve been though a 17 year cicada summer and can’t go out to the backyard without this sicking crunching sound…well you lose a little love.
The loudest cicadas I’ve experienced were in Big Bend National Park. I took a bike ride on one of the dirt roads, and the buzz was constant. After a couple of hours, my ears were ringing.
When I was a kid we had them everywhere at our house. I spent an entire summer with my daisy bb gun doing nothing every day but killing them. I shot over 100 in one day…bb’s are cheap. to this day that neighborhood is pretty well cicada free…that was about 1974 I think…