Too Close to Nature I

I must say, I love the new place (so far). Lots and lots of trees, that I love, and creepy-crawlies, that I hate. Let’s start with those and save the nice parts for later. The first night that we spent there I killed a cockroach, a big hairy spider and a slug. By now, a few weeks later, I’ve seen more species of spider that I care to, and cockroaches of all sizes and colours and stages of development.
One evening, while my niece and I were watching TV, we were startled by a very strange noise. It was like the sound of an alarm of some sort. But it was not regular, so it could be organic, and probably a bug. I hated to think about the size of the bug that made such a loud noise. We couldn’t watch TV with that kind of racket just outside the window, so we checked the small bushes outside. We also checked if there was some kind of alarm system that we didn’t know about. I shook the leaves, the noise stopped. We got in, it started again. We got out again armed with a flashlight, an umbrella and a thong. My niece finally found it. It was huge. And it wasn’t afraid. I shook the branch vigorously, it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t have the heart to spray it, partly because I didn’t think it would kill it immediately and would just cause it a lot of pain, so in the end I took out a pair of scissors and BBQ tongs. I held the branch where it perched and cut the branch off with the scissors. Then very carefully I took the branch to a small flower bed by the roadside, which is quite a distance away, and left it there. Later on my niece googled it and we found out it was a cicada.