Today I was snipping grass around the front yard when I spotted a clay clump, almost an inch high, too high to be made by a worm.  Then I saw more, hundreds of them in the soft dirt under the bird feeders.  When I picked one up, I saw a perfectly round hole formed in the clay, empty.  What could have made these?  I picked up one and took it to Timmy who was mending the deer fence - he had scared a turkey in the garden, and the turkey flew right through the netting.  He examined it, then followed me to the tiny village of lumps.  The first one he picked up was NOT empty.  There was a squirming cicada nymph in it.  UGH.

This is it - it's been 17 years since the cicadas have come up.  The last time I remember my nephew Patrick's son was here, probably 3 or 4 years old, and held his hands over his ears.  "Stop that noise", he demanded.  Yes, cicadas are very noisy.  I just looked them up in Wickipi (or whatever that internet dictionary is called).  Cicadas are the loudest of all the insect sounds.  They can cause permanent hearing loss if directly out side the eardrum.  (Bucky would have loved that.)  They are eaten by birds, sometimes squirrels and people in China.  They have to come out of the ground after all those years, a distance which varies from one to eight feet deep.  So what Timmy and I saw this morning was their exit tunnels. 

Apparently, when they come out, they climb a tree, and shed that skin and emerge as a full size cicada.  So be warned - they are coming.