Animal Insting

When cicadas come out, they leave holes in the ground that you can actually see. Then they crawl up on something like a tree and they take off their skin. If you can find a cicada while it is busy taking off its skin, you can catch it very easily because it can't fly yet. Under the old skin there is a whole new skin that has wings attached. If a cicada doesn't get eaten before its wings are ready to fly, it will fly up high in a tree and then dogs can't reach it, but birds can.

Mom doesn't have any photos of cicadas because we dogs eat them as fast as we find them. We eat them so fast that Mom can't even get her camera turned on. I was going to steal a nice photo of a cicada off of Wikipedia or someplace to put on my blog, but Mom said if I did that, the cyberpolice would come and put me in jail. I don't know if they really put dogs in jail, but I know for a fact that they do put them in boarding kennels, which is basically the same thing. So I found some clip art cicadas for my blog. These are totally free and legal to use, so you don't have to call the cyberpolice on me.

Anyway, here's what a cicada looks like:

Every day Mom takes me and Gabe out to hunt cicadas. She calls it "going for a walk," but we know why we are really out there. I like to look for cicadas in the street because they get run over by cars a lot. The squished ones are quite yummy, but the very best ones of all are the cicadas that I catch when they are just starting to fly away and I grab them out of the air with my teeth and crunch them up while they are still buzzing. This tickles my mouth, and I like that!

There are people in other places in the world that eat cicadas, but in this country people don't usually eat them, which is dumb because cicadas are so tasty. Mom figures it won't hurt us to eat them, and she even helps us find them. She can't find them with her nose, like we do, though, because her sense of smell is very poor compared to a dog's. So she has to find cicadas with her eyes, like a sighthound would. Whenever Mom finds a cicada, she taps her foot by it and says, "Look here!" I have learned that I should run right over and eat the cicada before Gabe gets there. Otherwise, he will eat it first.

One of these days, we will start not finding as many cicadas when we go out hunting. And then, sadly, we won't find any at all. After that, the weather will get cold and the leaves will fall off the trees and make big piles that we can pee in. I have figured out that there is a pattern to this because I am smart and I have seen it happen more than once. It will be hard to wait a whole year for another cicada season, so that's why I have to eat as many of them as possible right now.

I guess that's all I have to say about cicadas. But here's something else I want to talk about. A big, important senator man died, and his name was Ted Kennedy. I never met him, but what I heard on the radio today is that he has a dog named Splash who is a Portuguese Water Dog (not as cute as a basenji, but cute enough). Anyway, Splash has written a whole book about going to the Senate with his dad. So I think if a dog who is not even a basenji can write a book, then I can certainly write a blog. And that's my Reason Number 6 for doing it!