A Jarfly Is Born

"Jarfly" is the local name for the Annual Cicada.

I've used the name "Annual Cicada" in conversation with local people, and they say "What's that?" They know what a "jarfly" is. I don't know whether it means that the insect looks almost as big as a jelly jar, or that its loud rasping call is jarring; either explanation is true.

Anyway, while I was at home, doing the quarantine thing, I saw a cicada shell on a cover sheet on the porch. I started to dust it off. Oh wait--it wasn't empty!

The cell phone takes such wonderful pictures...Anyway, as you can see, inside the brown cicada shell was a very young adult cicada. It glowed with bright pastel colors in shades of jade green, mint green, and light coppery brown. (The adult "jarfly" darkens to black above and white below.)

I went in and got the cell phone camera. After that, things happened fairly quickly. With every breath it took, the young cicada expanded in some direction or other. It would expand in a way that didn't make a different picture; I'd think that it needed a rest and I could go and do something else, then look at it and see another change as the animal transformed into its adult size and shape.

Its upper back burst out through the upper back of the shell first. Then its head popped up.

Wings and legs were still crumpled when the expanding cicada separated from its old shell. While separating from the shell, the whole cicada lost its grip on the drop sheet and slid down a few feet. It climbed back to about the same place where it had begun trying to molt, leaving its shell behind. For this picture I picked up the shell and placed it beside the cicada to show how much size the insect had already gained.

Its adult legs eventually seemed longer than its pre-adult legs had been, but the legs on the left side expanded and were able to move the animal before the legs on the right side began working. Note the right hind leg trailing in this snapshot. The wings, on the other hand, expanded first on the right side. In the end the cicada's wings and legs were symmetrical.

It moved about as it expanded, testing its wings and legs.

The adult is about the size of my thumb, a little over two inches. Note how much darker its back already looks than it did about ninety minutes earlier. In real life the color had darkened from what I noted as "fawn" through new-penny to old-penny, on the thorax, although the head and abdomen remained a light shade of coppery brown.

I saw it starting to burst out of its shell a little after 1 p.m. and left it, when it had reached its full size and shape, to rest before it attempted to fly and call. From the first to the last of these photos took almost two hours. Between 3 and 6 p.m. I had other things to do.

At 6 p.m. the cicada was no longer on the porch, but a loud, triumphant, rasping call from the hedge told me it had matured and was out making the most of its short adult life.