Yesterday, as Don was leaving for work, he called to me from outside. "What do you make of this noise?" he asked. That was a fair question, since he left some of his hearing in VietNam.
Close by, overhead, there was a loud rhythmic sound, not quite like anything we'd heard before. At first I suspected that something was going wrong with the garage door mechanism, but we soon realized that the sound was coming from the gutter in front of the garage. By the time we were able to set up a ladder, the cadence of the sound had slowed, and then stopped altogether.
Don let me go first, as he held the ladder. One glance filled in the blanks. Inside the gutter, in a little water, a cicada was laying upside down. The gutter had served as a sound chamber, amplifying its struggles. I picked it up carefully and, righting it, set it free. It flew without a backward glance.
My delight was undiminished by the lack of a thank you. After all, how often does one get to be a hero before nine?
Note: The photo above was taken on another day, when a cicada was drying its dew-laden wings. The little thing yesterday didn't hang around long enough for a portrait.
