i win!

Starting around the age of 10, I spent a chunk of each summer at my cousin's house outside chicago. Each visit was spent swimming, making gum wrapper chains (which I still have and which measures somewhere around 75 feet), babysitting for an older cousin's kids, and taking trips to the lake house in michigan. It was great and something I looked forward to for months. The 17 year cicadas came during the summer I was 12. This resulted in an obnoxious constant buzzing noise, and a ground littered with dead cicada bodies. You literally could not take a step without stepping on several dead bugs. It was disgusting. My cousin and I spent that summer sweeping the driveway and wearing shoes anytime we went outside. When I returned home to massachusetts, a state thankfully without cicadas, I appreciated my ability to go outside barefoot.

A few weeks later, I received a beautifully wrapped jewelry box from my aunt in chicago. Since it was soon after my birthday, I assumed she'd forgotten to give this present to me while I was in chicago. I opened the box out on the patio, but instead of containing a necklace or bracelet, the box was filled with cicada corpses. I dropped the box, spilling the dead bugs all over the patio, and later had to pick them back up with a pair of scissors. 

Years later (at least 10 years later), I came across a dried up cicada under the rear window in my car. I have no clue how or when it got there, but I knew exactly what to do with it, namely wrap it up in a pretty box and mail it to my aunt at Christmas with this note: 

Dear Aunt Julie,

I thought of you when I saw this.

Love, 

Stephanie

Being the jokester she is, she got a kick out of this, and starting hatching a plan. For my next birthday, I opened my package to find that she'd painted the cicada gold, painted its eyes red, and hot glued it to a pin to make it wearable. I didn't retaliate, and a few years ago (after another coming of the 17 year cicada) she brought me a big box filled with dead ones. It sat in my garage for a while, but knowing that I'd see her at thanksgiving, I got to work. This is what I came up with:

I found an old frame, hot glued 12 cicada corpses around it, spray painted the whole thing black, dabbed their eyes red, varnished it, and added a photo of a dead cicada like bug I came across while hiking near hong kong (which I desperately wanted to bring home for her, but realized wouldn't have worked). I wrapped it all up pretty, gathered the family, and had her open it. She was very nervous (even jumped back when the flash from my sister's camera startled her!), but had a good laugh in the end. I cringe to think of how she'll beat this...