This is a tree next to our house, one of several, trees not houses, with cicada shells piled up. The tree barks are teeming with them, crawling up slowly and ditching their exoskeletons on the way up to perch on branches above and sing. How many are there, maybe millions? It is SO LOUD, from dawn to dusk. And they don’t cycle in and out like our typical fall cicadas. It’s a continuous chorus. It sounds almost exactly like the phasers on the old Star Trek series.