The kids and I like to play outside at night. It's nice and cool and a relaxing to time to hang out in the backyard. We play outside long after every one else has long put their kids to bed. It's just how we roll. The funny part is if you put some flood lights on, lots of big dumb bugs come and bonk into the lights. This includes those large annual cicadas. The girls think they are the coolest bugs and will follow them around until the point they decide to fly, done with minimal navigation skills which subsequently sends the the girls into shrieking fits until the bug lands again and is safely perched on the wall. (and not on their head) We see lots of adult cicadas and see the empty larva shells stuck all over things in the yard. We even saw a newly hatched adult drying itself while sitting on it's larva shell. The other night we found a very crawly cicada larva. The girls put it in a bug house for the night for it to hatch.

The little cutie pie larva baby looked like this! All muddy from his journey out of the ground. He was a fast crawler.


In the morning, the larva was just an empty shell!!


And this dude was in the bug house instead.


The miracles of nature. Out came a member of the loudest insect species in the world!


We played with him for a few minutes and then took him outside and he took off to the top of the nearest tree to go find a friend by making the magical buzzing of a hot summer afternoon.