A jungle

Have I mentioned that St. Louis weather-wise is rather like a jungle, at least in summer. The humidity is hair-raising, as I’ve said before. The mosquitoes are silently ubiquitous. I never see them or hear them, but my skin feels their bites, as evidenced by itchy bumps on my knuckle, a matching pair on the upper and inner sides of both my arms, on my knees…Diana has a succession of five across one of her feet.

Then there are the cicadas. I’d never heard a cicada before, that is if it’s possible to hear just a single cicada! The first time Luis and I ventured out in the evening for a walk in Tower Grove Park, we were met by the oddest sound, a very intense kind of incredibly loud and persistent metallic screaming shimmering sound…we thought it was coming from the electrical wires, but the sound seemed to follow us down the street. So we realized that it must be insects. We tried to get a look at the things in a smallish tree that was emitting a somewhat more timid version of the noise, but they would go quiet when we got near…so I haven’t actually seen a cicada.

Diana says that the birds sing at night, too. I haven’t experienced that yet.