The best parking spot at work is under a big oak tree right in front of the school. I was lucky to nab it this morning and after school I was planning to take a picture of the damage to the trees caused by our cicada infestation at the beginning of the summer. The leaves at the ends of the branches are all brown -- the cicadas cut into the branches and lay their eggs -- It cuts off food to the ends of the branches, but it doesn't hurt the tree. The brown leaves aren't permanent; they'll return to green next year. Anyway, it was the year of one of the broods of 17 year cicadas and they were rampant. Fascinating in a totally disgusting way . . . the ground was crunchy for weeks and we had to dodge them every time we went out side (they aren't very good flyers!). The constant buzzing hummmm was . . . well music might be going a bit far but it did lend a certain cadence to our days. It was like something out of "The Birds" . . . Only with bugs.
But I digress . . . The leaves I wanted to photograph were about 6 or 7 feet above me. When I enlarged the photo I saw this little carcass/exoskeleton/shell was stuck to the back of one leaf. Pretty tenacious: the cicada probably molted three months ago. I like how the hole in the leaf makes a little window to the blue sky (and you can see some of the brown leaves behind the green ones). The tips of nearly every branch of nearly every oak tree in the county is covered with bunches of brown crunchy leaves. Kind of creepy when you consider that those brown leaves were caused by hundred of thousands of creatures that left behind their skins just like this one.
