Look Into My Eyes!

  "Look into my eyes!" said the critter!  "Look into all FIVE of my eyes!" he crooned!  He was just waiting to woo some gorgeous female by staring at her with his two large and three small red eyes.  Such a handsome fellow was he!  Although, by the looks of it, he was a tad clumsy on his feet.

  While out picking okra today, I spied a large male cicada squirming about on the ground. (The size of the abdomen told me this was a male.)  The poor thing was upside down and wiggling so much that the ants would be sure to find him if I did not help.  So, help I did.  I gently scooped up the cicada and placed him on the side of one of the planter boxes.  Bloop!  He fell to the ground.  Well, Little Guy, if you want my help, then you have to help yourself as well, I gently scooped him up again and replaced him on the box.  Bloop!  Down he went once again. Alrighty then! I picked the critter up for the third time.  With this, Son took notice of my predicament.  "Set him on the peach tree." he said from his position amidst the fig branches where he was harvesting what was left on the tree.  So, the bug went on the peach tree limb. Bloop!  What was wrong with this goofy thing?  Could he not cling to anything?  I snatched him from the ground and had a brilliant idea!  I will place him on the herb shelf!  This outdoor shelf should provide him with plenty of surface to gain control of his legs.  No soon had I let him sit, than, BLOOP!  He was on the ground once again.  By this time, Son had decided to join me in my quest to find a suitable perch for the bug. A twig braced between two herb pots on the shelf seemed to steady the critter. (Yes, I do go to this much trouble for an insect!) Now, I could get back to picking that okra!

  And, yes, Cicadas do indeed have five eyes.  There are the two most noticeable compound eyes on either side of the insect's head and, then in a triangle between those two, are three much smaller "simple" eyes. These five eyes give the critter a keen sense of vision.  When they crawl out from beneath the ground to molt into an adult, they have to crawl to the nearest vertical object.  This is usually done at night and the critter can spy a tree or post quite a distance from them.  The insect will make the trek to the post (tree, house, leg, whatever) and crawl up to shed. There it will cling as it allows its wings to harden.  The empty case stays put.  

  So even though this almost sounds like some zombie invasion with things crawling out from beneath the ground, it is more an emergence. These critters have been underfoot for quite some time just waiting for the right moment to crawl out, mate and start the whole process of life all over again. Look into his eyes!  You might be mesmerized by the entire life cycle of these critters.  There is much more to them than just their loud buzzing and beautiful eyes!