Molting Cicada, 8 August 2023

I spent the day watching a cicada molt. Oops.

I ordered lunch from a nearby restaurant and walked to go get it. On my way back, I noticed a cicada exuviae (even when there's only one, the ending's -ae! like pants. you don't wear a singular pant) on the wall, and said to myself "boy, wouldn't it be cool to see one emerge!" Well, about 30 seconds later, what else did I see but a cicada making its way up the brick wall?
I was just going to sit and watch it there and eat my lunch outside, but then found out that the restaurant hadn't put utensils in the bag. Oh well. Good thing I've got a paper bag here! It's currently holding the aforementioned lunch, but hey, that's a trivial matter and easily solved by removing the lunch. Now it's empty and I can put a cicada in it without worrying about squish! (I didn't leave the lunch behind, for the record. I just wedged it into the crook of my arm.)
So I bring it upstairs to the museum library, and I set the bag down, and I go find a peanut butter jar + stuff some napkins into it. I transfer the (rather upset) cicada into the jar, and I watch for a couple moments, and I decide (as the napkin collapses under its weight) that really I'd better find something else to put it on. Lucky for me (and the cicada!), there's a cinder block in the hallway! Mike gave me a funny look when he saw me place a brick of conk crete onto the library table and stare at it, but as soon as I said "there's a cicada on it" he understood.

Well, it turned out to be a Very Good Thing that I'd brought it inside rather than watching outdoors... because it started actually molting (by which I mean it selected a spot on the cinder block to cling, rather than clambering more) at around 12:20 and wasn't fully hardened when I left at 16:08. The process of actually molting wasn't more than about 45 minutes to an hour of that time, it apparently takes them quite a bit to recover from peeling. As it turned out, "it" is a "he"! Learned this after he got the end of his abdomen out of the shell.
Speaking of getting that abdomen out... holy cow, I can't believe that gravity didn't do its thing! Cicadas aren't exactly slight-bodied beasts, and if you look at one of the pictures in the grid up there, not sure what order they're in on your screen, you'll see he's at a truly ludicrous angle. And he remained that way for a good 10-15 minutes!
Also, do you see how teeny his wings started out? I guess they have to, in order to fit into the wing pads of the nymphal exoskeleton, but really it's remarkable that they go from those little scrunkled-up buds into the wings that fully cover the adult abdomen! The magic of membranes, I suppose.