I had seen these empty, dry cicada shells clinging to branches many times. I never documented them last summer, and I genuinely hoped I would find another this year — something to admire, and finally record.
That little shell, armour, old skin — call it whatever you like — belongs to one stage of a cicada’s transformation. It frees itself from the old suit, leaves it hooked to a blade of grass or a twig, and flies into the “singing” part of its life, usually into the crown of a nearby pine or cypress. I found the process captured in this video: The transformation of a cicada.
I am fascinated by that perfectly engineered, dried-out armour, a detailed copy of the insect that has served its purpose yet remains standing there, clipped to a stem as though life were still inside it.
Nature teaches me through it that every stage of a living being’s growth gets the best possible design, and the full energy of nature’s effortless effort. Every detail receives everything, even when it is only scaffolding for development, just one link in the chain. Nature does not consider it wasteful to make something exquisitely complex that the insect will later discard. None of that labour or perfection was pointless; in its moment, it had a wholly justified and valuable function. Nature has no trouble giving its energy completely, without holding back, always at its best, because it does it without strain.
How might we learn to live by that principle?
Yes, all right, that is the sort of thing I marvel at… :)
Plan, front view, side view — in photographs — and then we left it exactly where we found it…
