It's now cicada time. They sit in the tops of the tallest trees and you can hear that patented buzzing as long as there's at least partial sun. They usually stay silent until August, making you forget they're there, and then suddenly the sound begins. They are so LOUD.

Just now the ones outside have stopped. They must have gotten tired for the moment.

When I was a kid I lived in a neighborhood full of huge willow trees complete with cicadas living and singing on top every summer. These trees were about 30-50 feet tall. At first I thought the sound was some kind of bird. Then when I found on the ground underneath a tree a discarded body shell from one of the cicadas, which looked like a horrid three-inch-long fly, I found out about them.

Those trees attracted other weird insects too. One spring we found a pale-green, almost fluorescent caterpillar about 8 inches long climbing over a willow root. Along its back it had tiny spikes, tipped with colored balls of yellow and red, I think. Or some other bright colors. It was the strangest thing. It began climbing the tree and we forgot about it.