I was sitting on my back porch sipping a midori sour and reading an Elizabeth Peters novel, as one does on a Friday evening, when I was pulled out of 19th century Egypt back into my real world by a ruckus at the back of the driveway. A loud buzzing sound and the frantic flapping of red wings caught my attention. It took a minute for my eyes to change focus from my e-reader to the outdoors (the over-40 set will understand the struggle) but, when they did, I clearly saw that a cardinal had triumphed over some sort of insect.
By the sound, I guessed it was a cicada. I haven't seen any yet this season, despite the major hatch-out that apparently has happened in other parts of the country. I wanted to know for sure but didn't want to disturb the feasting. After all, it sounded like it had taken some effort for the cardinal to slaughter the bug. I would have hated to scare him off his meal. Once he finished, however, I visited the scene of the crime looking for clues.
The first thing I saw was a shiny wing.
It was smaller than what I usually associate with cicadas but there are different sized cicadas and the green made me think my guess had been correct. Closer inspection yielded more clues, though some went against my cicada theory. (I know you shouldn't go into an investigation with a set conclusion in mind but I'm not actually a forensic investigator of any kind so I don't care.) There was a moth's wing and what appeared to be the shell of some variety of beetle - they kind of felt like acrylic fingernails, so that was interesting.
Then my investigation took a darker turn with a pair of legs, some distance from each other.
Okay, enough CSI for me. A cardinal had thrashed a bug that may or may not have been the first cicada of the season. Case closed. The ant crew was already on the scene to clean everything up. The wing had actually disappeared by the time I finished examining the rest of the bits. Nature is a wondrous thing!
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