My cicada anecdote: In my youth the cicadas were quite a bit more common. Probably because not every square inch of the land was cultivated back then, leaving

My cicada anecdote: In my youth the cicadas were quite a bit more common. Probably because not every square inch of the land was cultivated back then, leaving undisturbed nymphs in the ground to erupt periodically as adults in their millions. Every couple of years they'd swarm, probably different broods according to this article but nevertheless there they'd be, filling every tree and making their racket. One summer after they'd come and gone, filling the air with a sound like industrial saws going off every evening come dusk, the barnyard was blissfully quiet. But for one hardy individual, still sawing away (they rub legs together to make that awful noise?) by herself, having missed her once-in-a-lifetime chance for some sweet cicada nookie. It was loud as I walked down the lane, then it got suddenly VERY LOUD! then almost instantly quieter. Wha? I stopped, backed up carefully, and there it was - in a particular sweet spot the sound was like ten times louder! And inside my head! So I stood there, playing with the noise, moving slightly to make the center of the sound move around in my head, and it got quiet, I couldn't find it! Hm. Fish around, it had moved a few feet further north! I had to figure this out. So I listened carefully, found the little bugger, on the trunk of a tree some fifty feet away(!) I studied her from close-up. She'd saw away for a while, then do a side-step thing where she moved further around the tree-trunk, take up shrieking again. She was scanning for a mate! Like a lighthouse, broadcasting her fascinating search-beam in a progressive circle, hoping some male (or is the males that scan?) would hear her, find her sexy voice just the thing for him, and home in. Loud as she could, to out-compete the others doing the same thing presumably (not today, today she was alone, destined to die loveless and unmated). I remember this episode, fifty years later. It was a singular event; I moved away from the Midwest and never heard a cicada again for decades.