Life Science Lesson

At about 11:30 Sunday night, I was the only person still awake in my house, so I decided to take Ziva out one more time to ensure that she wouldn't wet the bed. (I don't think Jeff would respond well to having the dog wet the bed... OUR bed.) As I was sitting in one of our Adirondack chairs on the patio, I noticed a locust shell hanging from the arm of the other chair. This was the second locust shell I had seen that day, with the first being the one Hannah put on my pillow. Sweet girl. Anyway, I looked closer and realized that the dang locust was still coming out of the shell. Now, I have seen about a trillion ("with a T", for you Fox News fans out there) locust shells in my lifetime, but I have NEVER seen it being exited by the actual locust, so of course I ran and got my camera! Lucky you!

Look at its tiny little shriveled up wings. It made me think of that story about adversity and how it's good for you. You know, the one where the boy helps the butterfly out of its cocoon, and its wings never unshrivel because the struggle of de-cocooning itself makes its wings work. So, I resisted the urge to help the locust.

I kept taking pictures and thought, "Man! These pictures are SO bright. Maybe if I move the chair close to the porch light that will help." I didn't really think it through. I just started moving the chair with the locust still dangling from the arm.

Then I remembered: My camera has a night portrait function. SWEET! Here is the locust after I picked him up off the ground. He didn't quite make it all the way back down off the porch. I was very relieved he didn't die. (I am convinced that this is why God made them do this at night. When most people are not still awake.)

I had to put his little shell where he could see it.

Here he is on my finger, which was fine until he decided to crawl up my arm. I got him to crawl off onto my pajama pants leg, but he started making a bee-line up my leg. At that point I stopped taking pictures and looked for a stick.

For you entomologists out there, I realize that it may be more accurate to call this a cicada. I call it a locust. That's the beauty of being in total control of the blog. Of course my power trip was tragically cut short by Hannah who told me it was pathetic for me to dedicate an entire post to a locust sighting. Maybe next time I'll post a thousand pictures of myself. Evidently that's cool.