Cicada Visit

cicada that wants inside

Last night--not long after Joyce and I got home from (another) visit to Szalay's farm market down in the Cuyahoga Valley--we heard the doorbell. I peeked outside. It was our son, Steve, and our grandsons, Logan and Carson, who live down in Green, Ohio, where, incredibly they have no cicada action.

The boys wanted to hear and see them.

And, oh, did they!

Our old trees are thick with the critters, and the noise was nearly deafening, even in the early evening. (Old Sol is the cicada conductor.) Some flew into us, and we adults pretended not to be startled while the boys manifested an array of responses, ranging from curiosity to "Isn't-it-time-to-go-to-A&W now?"

Logan (11) was feeling pretty good about the day: He'd shot a legit 80 for 18 holes (a better golfer now than I ever was). And Carson (7), inside, got curious about a children's edition of Gulliver's Travels that we have; he got even more interested when we told him about the Yahoos, those foul critters who liked to sit up in trees and fling foul things on whoever was passing by. (Sounds like a fairly appealing profession, as I think about it.)

All too soon they had to head out (A&W does have closing hours, you know?), now armed with several sorts of knowledge:

• cicadas are loud
• cicadas look creepier than they are
• cicadas emerge from the neatest holes in the ground you could ever imagine
• Grandma and Grandpa know some weird stuff
• their great-grandpa Dyer also loved root beer floats

And Joyce and I were so grateful for the visit--and were left yearning for another.