Passionate Cicada HUNTER

Ah! It's an Abura!

An Abura is singing!!

Even though he was in the middle of lunch, my eldest son threw down his chopsticks and dashed out to the balcony, looking down from the gaps in the railing at the cherry tree-lined street that had turned into fresh green below.

Of course.
Since we are on the sixth floor, no matter how hard he strains his eyes, there is no way he could actually see a cicada, and to an adult, this behavior just seems strange.

This season, just as summer vacation for kindergarten is about to begin, makes the blood of my eldest son, who has just turned five, stir as a cicada HUNTER.

"Hey. Hiro-kun, hurry up and eat your lunch."

He was looking around so intently that I couldn't help but call out to him, and he reluctantly returned to his seat, looking as if he were being pulled back by his hair.

"When I'm done eating, we're going cicada hunting," he said with sparkling eyes, before silently shoveling his lunch into his mouth.

—Ah. It's already that season, isn't it—

I thought to myself, as if I had been waiting for this, that I was glad I had bought an insect cage and a net at the local home center just three days ago.

Cicadas have a rarity ranking

The cicadas that inhabit the area where I live are mostly "Kumazemi" (large brown cicadas), with a small number of "Aburazemi" (large brown cicadas) as well.
Catching an Aburazemi, which is relatively rare among the dominant Kumazemi, seems to be a status symbol for my son.

Looking at the distribution across the country, it seems that Aburazemi are actually more common, so in reality, neither is a rare or unusual cicada, but for him, the rarity level is different.

To me, the difference in their calls is just a slight variation in pitch, and both are equally noisy and sweltering, but for him, they are pleasant sounds that announce the arrival of a blissful season, and he can distinguish between their calls instantly.

Of course, it's not just these two species; there are even rarer cicadas, and he was able to distinguish the calls of other cicadas as well.

Around Nishinomiya City, where my parents' home was, most were Kumazemi (large brown cicadas), but when we traveled far into the mountains, we found the 'Minminzemi,' which is rare in the Kansai region, and
in the forests near the coast of Yura Town in Wakayama Prefecture, where we went for swimming, we once found the even rarer 'Tsukutsukuboushi'.

These seem to inhabit the relatively colder eastern Japan, specifically around the Tohoku region, and are super-rare finds that you rarely see in the Kinki area.

His excitement would jump to the max, and his determination to catch them no matter what was completely different from his usual self; both his expression and his focus would change, making him seem like a different person.

His rarity ranking is as follows:
1st place - Tsukutsukuboushi
2nd place - Minminzemi
3rd place - Aburazemi
4th place - Kumazemi

The HUNTER's knowledge of cicadas extends much further, but this is as much as I could remember.

Generally, during this time, he carried a net and a cage wherever he went, and he never neglected to be prepared to act whenever the cicada HUNTER switch was flipped.

I am impressed that he alwaysmaintained such tremendous passionThis is because when we went to the sea for swimming or snorkeling, he once used a fish net as a makeshift tool and couldn't hunt as he wanted, which seemed to be a significant lesson for him.

It goes without saying that thanks to this, the family ended up having to go along with cicada hunting wherever we went.

Child-rearing that wasn't supposed to be like this

Even looking back, I cannot remember why this child became so fond of insects.
He is interested in living things in general, but he is especially uncompromising when it comes to insects, and among them, cicadas.

My eldest son was born in July, so was that around the time he was three?

I can't remember what the trigger was, but my husband probably plucked a cicada off a tree and let him hold it while I wasn't looking.

In my memory, my eldest son was already in love with cicadas.

I hate them.
Touching them is out of the question.

That summer, I would find cicadas on trees and catch them with a net, and when I laid it on the ground, my eldest son would run over, rip the cicada from the net, and skillfully shove the buzzing cicada into the cage.

It was a two-personrelay cicada huntthere.

The way he skillfully moved his small hands while adjusting the strength of his grip showed extraordinary caution, and his expression, with his lips pursed and large beads of sweat on his face, showed considerable concentration.

Never in my life had I stared at tree trunks so intensely until then.
Because cicadas are camouflaged, you cannot confirm them unless you look carefully.
I felt like I was experiencing a real-life 'Where's Waldo?', and when I suddenly came to my senses, I was surprised to find that I had been enjoying it myself.

Truth be told, I wanted to stay still in an air-conditioned room, but since they are my children, that was not an option.
Under the scorching sun, I spent a grueling summer while pregnant with my second son.

For the most part, the "child-rearing" I had imagined was nothing like this.
As the eldest of four sisters myself, the concept that babies equal girls was firmly established in my mind, and I dreamed of being surrounded by pink goods, quietly playing with dolls, and cooking together.

And yet, look at this.
Two pregnancies, and both times, boys.

In another era, this would have been highly praised by my in-laws, but my "dream child-rearing" crumbled away, and it took some time for me to shift my mindset.

Since then, both my eldest and second son have brought home every kind of creature imaginable.
Crayfish, frogs, lizards, tadpole shrimp, turtles, grasshoppers, praying mantises, and so on—there was always something in our house.

Oh, that's right. I even raised beetles and stag beetles from larvae.
And in large quantities, too.

Each one has its own story, and I have had enough experiences to write an article about each one.

The HUNTERs changed the ecosystem

By the following year, my second son had been born, so the time I could go with him was limited. It is difficult to take a baby who is not even a year old out into the scorching sun for long periods.

The four-year-old Cicada HUNTER, however, was a different story.
Sometimes, I had no choice but to make him promise to stay only in the park within our apartment complex that I could see from the entrance, and let him go alone, but I was always on edge every time.

Occasionally, there were times when I couldn't spot my eldest son no matter how much I looked down, and I would hurriedly put my second son in the stroller and search for him.

When that happened, residents of the same apartment complex, cleaning staff, or the building manager would always tell me, "I just saw him over at such-and-such a place."

Thanks to him being a famous Cicada HUNTER in the neighborhood, someone was always watching over him as long as he was on the apartment grounds, which was a huge help.

The four-year-old's passion for cicadas was so strong that he would forget his mother's instructions and move to places where I couldn't see him.
Always worried that he might even be kidnapped, I would take my second son, who was still a baby, and accompany him as much as I could.

Ignoring his parent's worries, the HUNTER would diligently work at catching cicadas every day without ever getting tired of it.

Then, in the evening, when he returned with a bug cage so full of cicadas it looked black, he would sit on the wooden deck of the balcony, carefully open the cage, take them out one by one, confirm whether they were male or female by looking at their abdomens and saying it out loud, and then release them vigorously into the sky.

Getting him to accept this was also difficult.
I remember how hard it was to make my son, who believed that cicadas could be kept as pets, understand why he had to let them go.
I bought picture books and field guides to repeatedly explain the habits of cicadas and the shortness of their lives.

The result of him understanding it in his young heart was the act of releasing them in the evening.

My eldest son retired as a cicada HUNTER around the time he was in second grade, but even now, he can reliably distinguish the sounds of cicadas.

According to my eldest son's recollections now that he is an adult,
"I'm the one who changed the cicada ecosystem around here."
he says with a straight face and absolute conviction.

He still listens to the sound of cicadas every year as always, but he claims that the reason we started hearing the calls of the 'Min-min-zemi' and 'Tsukutsukuboushi' is because of the cicadas he caught in Nishinomiya and Wakayama and released from our balcony.

Since a grown man was saying this with such a serious expression, I couldn't help but burst out laughing, but thinking about it later, it didn't seem entirely wrong.

They were cicadas that shouldn't have been living in Nishinomiya or Wakayama in the first place.

Perhaps, due to the actions of other cicada HUNTERs like my eldest son, they were released into the Kinki region, and a small number of them adapted to the environment and continued to multiply?

◇

Today is my eldest son's 27th birthday.

As I was working on my computer thinking about that, I heard the sound of a cicada, and when I looked at the balcony, the image of thelittle HUNTER with a great passionfor releasing cicadas one by one still comes to mind.

I find myself feeling nostalgic for the sight of our family's cicada HUNTER, wandering in the shade of the trees with his water bottle and insect cage slung diagonally across his body like an X, and a net held in his hand.

At the same time, I realize that although I had hoped for girls so much, I am satisfied with the fact that I had a reasonably fun time raising children, gaining experiences and knowledge that I could only have had with my sons.