The Bugs of Summer

It's supposed to be 17-year cicada time here in northern Illinois -- been a big deal in the papers and in local news reports -- but I haven't seen nor heard them yet very much. We did find one shell while taking a walk on Saturday at the Spring Valley Nature Reserve. Not that the bugs are such a big deal to me anyway. We had the annual variety in South Texas, and as a very small child I was afraid of the empty shells.

But there are plenty of other insects around. There's been a population explosion of tiny green bugs on and around our deck. Don't know what they are, exactly, micro-beetles, maybe, not much bigger than a pinhead. They haven't been so numerous in past years, but whenever we've sat around outside lately, the bright green bugs make their way onto our chairs, clothes, and other objects, including the books I take outside. They don't bite, or cause harm that I know about, but who wants small crawling bugs that close? You either smash them or brush them off.

Also on Saturday, around dusk, I saw a single firefly lighting up. He was early. Usually they're markers of high summer, not rising summer. He flashed a couple of times. I imagined he was wondering, Where Is Everyone?

On Sunday, Lilly and I took a walk to a park that includes a small creek, whose banks are lush with tall grass and a few flowers. We saw a kind of dragonfly we'd never seen before -- about a inch long, very slender, with green on its head, a body of black segments, and a blue tip at the very end. They flitted around quickly and noiselessly like a glider.