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Funny about cicadas. We're so delighted when they begin to emerge in spring, and watching the damp and crumpled wings stretch and strengthen is a breathtaking experience. (I'd like to say "awesome", but my granddaughter and her friends have worn the meaning away from that particular word.)
In high summer, though, the screeching of countless cicadas in the middle of an almost unbearably hot day is pretty hard to take. It's not nice, either, to hear one long despairing screech as a single cicada is borne off by a bird. They seem so hopelessly vulnerable. I suppose they rely on numbers to keep going as a species.
In the last few years, with every house and large garden being replaced by three or four units with a strip of treeless landscaping, the number of cicadas here seems to have gone down drastically. I don't like that. Cicadas were a big part of summer.