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05/20/2004 Entry: "Flying Turtles" One day in 1998, I was walking home from work when something whizzed past my ear from behind and narrowly missed me. I watched it bounce into the soccer field far in front of me. I turned around, half thinking some jerkoff tossed stuff at me from the road behind me, but I didn't see any cars that looked like they contained such hooligans. I then went to investigate what I thought was a rock, and discovered it was a turtle shell. I watched it for a few minutes, wondering if a turtle would come out, but none did, so I concluded it was a dead turtle, perhaps chipped like a tiddlywink from the road. I took it home, and placed it on the couch next to my backpack, with the intent of showing it to CR when he got home from school. About an hour later, I noticed my cats were REALLY interested in something on the couch, and when I went to look, I saw the turtle was alive, and moving around the couch with a bad limp. Christine totally fell in love with this turtle, and we named it Marie Curie after the famous scientist. We had this turtle for a few months until her leg healed. We kept it in an old Reptile tank that our friend Rogue once kept her Boa in. All Marie would eat was cherries for some reason, which I am sure was bad for her, but she wouldn't eat the turtle pellets or any other fresh veggies or worms we got her. She did lay two eggs, confirming she was female, but the eggs were sterile. The big joke, however, was how we got Marie. People kidded about turtles flying at me and I think some people thought I was making this all up. Some people made jokes about turtles parachuting from trees and such. Considering I almost died in the manner of Aeschylus Well, here's proof it can happen. In cicada news I guess no news is good news. I saw one live cicada in our yard a few days ago, and both dogs sniffed it crawling through the grass with great interest for a minute or so. Then they sort of gave up because it didn't do anything. I have seen a few shells, but no more than I usually see this time of year. On quiet nights, I can hear the whir in the background, but it's far away. I have seen more shells on trees in wooded areas, but if I didn't know a swarm was coming, I'd would never have thought anything unusual was happening. On a public list, someone said they were "swarming Fairfax," but she must have a very localized swarm. Maybe our area is nothing but late bloomers. I feel hesitant about declaring this swarm a bust, because that seems like tempting fate, and I am not so sure I want to see a swarm of them again like I saw in 1987.