I think cicadas have reached the height of mindfullness practice, but in today’s Post Joel Achenbach prefers to refer to their mindstate as obliviousness. Either way, we’re both on the same page with this:

There is a temptation to scorn cicadas, what with their narrow, molt-mate-and-die agenda, the one-note song of the males that sounds like someone has left the pod-bay door ajar, and their general adaptive tendency to rely entirely on numbers rather than skill or savvy or strength or any other evolutionary adaptation.

But they teach us something. They remind us that the world isn’t about just us.

As the human population grows and our technology expands, it is easy to assume that we have dominion over the planet. And then these cicadas crawl from deep in the ground and pay no attention to our needs and wants and various crises.

Good article. Go read the whole thing.

Also check out yesterday’s Kid’s Post section (which, mysteriously, is not currently on line) for a nifty little chart highlighting the differences between periodic and annual cicadas.

Email from Alec in Africa (go read of their adventures and look at the pics) reports that he misses the cicadas desperately. See. Other people love them.

I found these fun cicada pictures here at the shrewdness of apes, a site I’ve been enjoying recently although I can’t remember how I found it.