There are few things which speak summer to my eyes and ears in these parts as much as lightning bugs, or fireflies, if you prefer, and cicadas.
Not a week ago, I stepped out one morning—because it is the only time to be outside—and I heard it: that telltale shiver through the treetops, and I knew that the cicadas had come out of their earthy hibernation and scaled the barks of how many different types of trees, and molted, and climbed further still to a nice, high perch, then proceeded to buzz the bejeezus out of their tymbals—a special organ that cicadas and other species of insect possess.
All day long, hearable even within in the house, the cicadas buzz little crescendos one after the next.
Then twilight falls and the shade under the trees deepen and sharpness of things goes out, and all the woods are quiet—breathing, ventilating, as though the trees themselves are at last airing out all that the heat they've soaked up throughout the long rainless summer day, and—at first—there's one, soon followed by another, and as though on cue: another, then another, and before you know it the whole lawn is sparkling with bioluminescent butt-juice.
In the house, too, a firefly or two will find their way in and you know they're there when their butt lights up. Few other insects share the special status that fireflies share with people. Few other insects are so gladly welcomed and allowed to crawl all over our arms and legs and faces—harmless tickling little beetles that they are.
And that got me to thinking...
Insects.
We don't always think of insects as being emblematic of anything. Most people around the world seem to choose other creatures to signify things, or themselves. How many people use lions to signify their courageous spirit? Or to guard their gates? How many football teams, in America, especially, are named after one hot-blooded animal after the next—often predatory in nature? How many children's books tend towards polar bears, penguins, dolphins, whales, elephants, hippopotamuses, tigers and other zoo-type animals?
And what of bugs?
Spiders, not an insect but still a bug, often get a bad wrap, though there's one living up in the corner over our showerhead, and even if he makes me nervous with his long spindly legs that he plucks at his web with every time I plop shampoo in my hair—and I think: this one belongs in the crawlspace under the house or in a cobweb up in the attic, not in my shower when my eyes are closed!—still, I don't get rid of him. In fact, I've become kind of fond of him and I hope he eats the one or two stray gnats flying about our house.
Then I think of all the other bugs about the house:
Some baby praying mantises were crawling and flitting over the stiltgrass that I've let grow tall, hard to see if they weren't moving they were so greenly-translucent.
The baby and I go outside, sometimes, when we need a reminder of why we leave the AC running, inside, all day, and we go watch the bumblebees make their circuits across the purple tops of the coneflowers.
There are the jumping attack spiders, the wolf spider and fishing spider, that crawl up from under our house and find their way inside and take two or three whacks with a fly swatter to kill.
There was a cockroach in the sink this morning.
And the ants, big ones and little ones and biting ones—they have invaded our house a few times this year.
And there's the entire cans of insecticide I have sprayed in defensive perimeter-fashion all around the house, and each door, and each window. And the five or six, or dozen, ant- and roach-baits positioned strategically in every corner of the house. And the yellow gnat tapes on the porch. And the sticky pads forming a secondary line of defense under the bathroom closet door. And the—
Well, you get the picture...
Still, I think if I've learned anything during this pandemic, from being cooped up in the house all day and night, and the rather more stringent than normal stay-at-home policy we maintain for ourselves, in order to be as extra careful as we can considering existing medical conditions, the youth of the baby (now a toddler, I guess, technically, since he's one year old! and has teeth he likes to test out on our toes...), and the fact that no one is really quite sure what the long term consequences of a COVID-19 infection may be, however the signs so far are not encouraging—I think I've learned that it is the insects which speak summer to me more than anything.
It is the lightning bugs, and the spider webs strewn through the branches, and the nasty buzz of the mosquito in the ear, and the cicadas, and—coming soon to a woods near you—the chirping of katydids, which say the long swallow in the heat has arrived.
The sun-filled days of July and August are marked.
The roadside weeds and the leaves in the garden may wilt. The grass brown up and crisp. Even the trees seem to slumber it's so sweltering.
The twin fawns who've taken up residence in the vinca under our pines take their afternoon siestas, there, sheltering what they can from the roasting air.
Even the humidity's baked off, recently.
Nothing much moves until darkness. Every brief breath of wind is like a hairdryer in the face, and then, there is a cicada buzzing off somewhere, and it's the perfect sound for this scene, this feeling, this sense that summer has rolled in and stretched out, like it'd like to stay a while, and take a nap.
And that's all from the mountain this perhaps weekly. Thanks for reading.