Saw a cool cicada

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My boyfriend saw it first, he was out smoking a cigarette and noticed a bug crawling out of the dirt and then up the tree. So he showed me and it was pretty cool. I mean these things live underground in a hard shell before they emerge above ground and climb upward to shed their exoskeleton..exposing their flying form. Of course after that they make obnoxious ongoing noises to attract a mate but still cool to see. I kind of wish I could have collected its left-over exoskeleton but it climbed too high up in the tree before shedding it.

It finally explains something that scared me when I was a kid...I thought at the time I was seeing a giant tick or something, but looking at picutures of what the cicadas leave behind when they emerge in their winged forms. I am pretty sure that time as a kid I got horrified by nothing more than an inanimate cicada skin left over from when it emerged with its winged form.

I mean it was bigger than I thought those things would be, but yeah in its juvenile form it just looks like a giant beetle with crab like pinchers on the front legs(but those are to help it climb) but when it develops its adult form it looks more like a cross between a cricket and a fly with wings.

I've only ever seen the juvenile form once, late at night after a storm had passed. I've seen a few adults before, including one that died in the process of shedding because it was in a spot with full sun, and one very tiny adult that was probably not even half a centimeter in length, which just so happened to crawl into my shirt somehow.