Cicadas

I'm starting to hear the cicadas in my neighborhood. I think they started making noise a day or two ago. I've only been hearing a couple of them and we don't have the swarm that the downtown area has been experiencing yet...thank God! I've also seen a bunch of cicada shells on the trees, but I have yet to see a cicada in my yard. I'm thinking that there are so few of them that the birds are able to pick them off. There seems to be a family of robins in my backyard, and I'm sure they're pretty content nowadays.

Cats and Bugs

Now that it's summertime, a lot more bugs have been getting into the house. Fortunately, it seems like we're getting less carpenter ants in the house since I sprayed around the foundation a few days ago. I've been killing less of them lately. The occasional winged insect, which the cats love of course, will get through the door though.

arwenmonster seems to think I need to work on my hunting / bug catching skills more. Or maybe she's think that, between doomsey and me, I'm the bug hunter because I tend to kill more of them...mostly the stray carpenter ant here and there. Another theory is that she's trying to plot my death...or other forms of unpleasantness. Last night, I was sitting reading about the massive amounts of drama and angst that's been occurring on LJ this past week, when arwenmonster thought it would be cute to chase a bug-- a wingled black and red beetle of some sort-- in my general direction. It ended up crawling on my arm. And she was sitting on the floor looking at me with those cold, calculating eyes of hers..the little shit. It mustn't have been too entertaining because I flicked it off of me and continued reading.

That reminded me of something not so cute that cosettemonster did to me when she was a kitten. I was working on the computer in my basement when she chased a centipede up my pant leg. I felt something tickling my leg, and for a second I thought it was my jeans or the cat doing something bizarre. I could hear her doing something underneath the desk. She was a kitten after all, and most kittens are synonymous with trouble. At some point, it got annoying, so I started shaking my leg. I looked down to see a centipede crawl out of my pant leg. Of course, I screamed, scaring the shit out of the cat in the process. She never did THAT again...

Dinner! Come and get it!

Hey doomsey! I cooking cicada er, shrimp tonight. Yeah...that's right...I'm cooking shrimp. It's shrimp. Honest!

Yes...I've been outside today...and no...there is nothing interesting in that bowl over there. Just a little something that needs de-shelling...