Beasties

Last Summer we were camping out when we ran across this thing:

Both The Girl and The Boy immediately started offering their ideas of what it was.

The Girl thought it might be the chrysalis of a butterfly until she noticed the legs, at which point she said “Ewww” and found an excuse to be as far from it as she could get, only to wander back and look at it again a minute later.

The Boy shrugged and started to say it was some bug, then stopped himself and started talking about pod people and alien invaders and was working up a real head of steam when Mr. Al saw it.

“Cicada.” Mr. Al said, then corrected himself. “Cicada skin.”

The two of us muttered about molting and the funny sound they make and how perfectly intact the thing is. Then The Girl found this:

Yep, a cicada. While The Girl and The Boy both said they didn’t think they were the same thing at all, I think it might actually have been the very same cicada.

What do you think?