Cicadas are certainly the heart and soul, or, at least, the voice, of mid-summer heat, but because they mostly do their singing in huge congregations from the safety of the tops of trees, they're very rarely seen. This one, to my surprise, came to me via my black cat Arlo. I was listening to a whirring chorus reminiscent of the sound made by the hum and crackle of electricity through wet wires when I heard an abrupt descending solo as one of the cicadas plunged to the leaf litter. Arlo heard it, too, and came running to investigate. I followed the feline and, before he did, found the unfortunate creature, which was barely alive. Perhaps the cicada had simply used up his allotment of time and fell out of the group. Whatever the cause of his near demise, I put the insect in a bug bottle where it quickly died and then tried to identify it. Oy, yet another group of hard critters to put names to, and the task is made all the worse due to, a couple of years ago, a complete revision of the cicada group. This one, I think, belongs to the Lyric Cicada congregation, but that's a best guess subject to subsequent revision. At least I now have a cicada to study and ponder while I listen to the insect songs I also need to master.