Sparrows & Me Verses Cicadas!

I need a lie detector!  I need a bug exorcist!

Cicadas appear every August.  Someone said they only come every 17 years.  NOT!  They come every year!  

They love the 70 foot maple tree in the front yard.  It was a sapling we transferred here from our first house in Elwood.  Now, it's 9 ft. in diameter and a story taller than our 2 story house!  

Those chunky many-colored cicadas get so loud in the afternoon that I have to shut the screen and sliding glass door.  No enjoying the great outdoors with a good book, or a cup of coffee.  As the saying goes, "You can't even hear yourself think!"

"It's an incessant cadence of high-pitched, shrill sounds," says Purdue University website, and boy, ain't it the truth.

Sometimes, in frustration, I scream back at them, LOL.  Can't you just see a 70 y.o. woman on her front deck, face upwards, yelling at insects that haven't got a brain.  (Don't say it!  No, don't you say it!  Don't you dare say anything about my brain!)

Curious, I went online searching for cicada predators and other ways to deal with their mind-altering noise.

Come to find out they are disturbed by changes in light and movement, and that "playing the sounds of sparrows, which are natural predators, might cause them to temporarily become quiet or relocate."  Yay!  A possible solution!

Song birds are hesitant to hang around here due to the resident feline, Ruger.  But I got an idea.  Yep.  I did.  Youtube.com had many selections of sparrow songs and calls.  LIVE!  Yay!  Some for 3 minutes, some for 9 minutes, and even one for 10 hours.  Another, yay!

Now, how to do it.  

So, I set this up.  Open laptop, select video, set on picnic table, hit start, sit back, observe.

  Lo and behold, 3 things happened!

Strange birds, as in I hadn't heard them in a long-long time, came to the treetop and added to the orchestra, tweet-tweet-tweet!  Chirp-chirp.  Coo-oo-Coo-oo.

The cicadas stopped their raucous.

Ruger cat came around - investigating.  First, meandering around the deck.  Then curling the table legs.  Jumping up onto the bench, and then the tabletop.  Finally, she sat down right next to the computer on the picnic table.  I wasn't fast enough to take that picture but you can imagine.  She just sat there, head slowly turning left and right, eyes scanning-scanning, and her little butt butted up to the side of my Mac laptop.

There was a feast to be had.  She thought a sumptuous meal was forthcoming.  Ruger was pouncy-ready. 

Hey, listen!  Did you hear that?  Did you hear what I said?  The cicadas stopped their raucous! 

I win!

Sparrows & Me verses Cicadas - I WIN!  Whoo-hoo!

Where's that coffee and my book?  Scanning-scanning ...