The More the Boys Looked,
the More They Found

On most August mornings, Ethan and Aaron
found lots of adult cicadas. Many adults were
dark-colored, but some were so pale that they
looked as if they had just finished shedding
their skins. (A few pale cicadas still had tiny
wings).

The pale cicadas
were easy to spot
on the dark tree bark. Birds might eat them
before their wings
were stiff enough to
fly away. (Maybe
that's why most
nymphs shed their
skins early in the
evening.)

The boys also found some adult
cicadas with bent or folded wings.
Their wings might have pressed
against something as they inflated.

Some of these adults couldn't even fly.
We put them in the bushes, so they
would be safe from birds.

Shedding must have been really hard
and even dangerous work! Ethan and Aaron sometimes found cicadas that
died before they could escape from
their old skins.

Ethan found two adult cicadas mating.
He held them for awhile and showed them
to his friends. Then he set them free.

	Our books said that cicada nymphs spend years living underground. We had been wondering what the nymphs looked like during these burrowing years. Then, one day, men came to tear up our street.
	We got a peek at cicadas' underground lives when the shovel cut through their deep tunnels. Some nymphs tumbled out of their tunnels into the newly dug trench.

The larger nymphs had pale backs and
bright red eyes. We kept them in jars of
dirt, but they died without shedding their
skins. (Read about the "Mystery of the
Red-eyed Nymphs.")

We wondered why one smaller nymph was
almost white. (Read about the "Mystery of
the White Nymph.")

In early August, Ethan found two huge
wasps, more than an inch long. (They
were dead, so they didn't sting him.)

They looked like pictures of cicada killer
wasps in our Peterson Field Guide to
Insects.

Our books said that cicada killers capture
adult cicadas and paralyze them with their
stings. Then they drag the bodies into
deep burrows and lay their eggs on them.
When the eggs hatch, the baby wasps eat
the cicadas' bodies.

We went looking for cicada
killer wasps burrows. Read
about it in the "Mystery of the Cicada Killer Burrows."

NEXT: Try to solve cicada mysteries

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This page was created on August 26, 2000, and it was last updated on July 27, 2002.

The More the Boys Looked, the More They Found

The More the Boys Looked,
the More They Found