Jack and Poppy crashed through the kitchen door and came pushing and sliding to mum. “Mum!” they shouted. “We’ve found one of those dry things!”
“Look!” said Poppy. She lifted up her hand and held it right up close to mum’s face.
Mum laughed and pushed her hand away a little bit and said, “Now, now. Slow down you two. What have you got?” And Jack said they’d found it on the brick wall at the bottom of the garden. Then Poppy slowed down and opened her hand gently so mum could see. “Ah,” said mum, “it’s so delicate.” And it was.
In Poppy’s hand there was a shrivelled up little brown monster. It looked like it was made of the thinnest, thinnest glass all shiny and empty. Just a monster’s body, with prickly feet and a big head and nothing inside.
“It’s got nothing in its body,” Jack told his mum. “Yes, I see,” mum said. Jack said, “The little animal thing with the body squeezed out and went somewhere and he left behind this empty shell. A lovely brown colour.” Poppy said it was actually more like rubiginous. [ru-bigin-ous] I
Mum smiled. “It’s a chrysalis,” she said. “A lovely, delicate chrysalis. Look, everything is there. The head. The feet.”
“And the eyes,” Poppy said. “See those lumpy things? That’s its eyes.”
And the three of them looked at the monster shell in Poppy’s hand and it was so amazing that no-one wanted to say anything. Until mum said, “It must be the season for them to turn into cicadas.” Poppy said it was and that their teacher had told them to look out for monsters. “This one was on the wall,” Jack said. “Just holding on with its spiky feet. We found it.”
And mum said that usually cicadas squeezed out of their monster shells early in the morning. But she thought if they went out into the hill now, even though it wasn’t early, they might find some little monsters wriggling and squeezing out of their glass shells.
“Really?” Poppy said. “Could we go out now and see them, mum?” Mum said they certainly could and before she could say ‘little monster’ Jack and Poppy were bundling out the door.
Mum called after them, “Look on the trees!” Jack and Poppy jumped and bumped and ran and yelled. Out through the gate, along the footpath and up the hill. Up and up through the long grass and pushed through the little bushes. And then they started to puff and pant so they slowed down and started to plod and nod their way up.
“Where will we find the monsters?” Jack wanted to know. “I think up on those big trees,” Poppy said, looking ahead. “On the tree trunks where the sun is. They like the hot.” Jack said he knew that because their teacher had told them. And on and up they walked. Up towards the first big tree.
When they got there they found it really was big. The trunk was much more round than Jack could reach, even when he pressed his tummy on the tree and stretched out both of his arms. And it was tall. The tree went straight up for a long way before the first big branch. And then there were more and more branches above that.
This was a big tree. And Poppy said it must be an old tree because the bark on the outside was rough and tough. “The bark will be a good place to look for the monsters,” said Jack, “because they can snuggle into the rough places and hide a bit from the wind and stuff.” Poppy nodded and they both began to look closely all over the big tree trunk.
But there were no monsters. Jack got sad. “There’s none,” he said. And Poppy nodded. “Yes. Looks like they’ve absconded” Then she stopped. “Jack! They haven’t. Look!” and she pointed up towards the first branch, high above them. “See?” And then Jack spotted them too. “Poppy, there’s lots of monsters!”
And sure enough, there was a group of monsters up above them holding onto the bark of the tree with spiky legs. Poppy jumped and squealed. “Jack, there’s cicadas too!” She was right. The little monsters were moving. In three or four of the glass monster cases they could see live cicadas were bursting out.
“They’re coming!” Jack said. “Poppy, they’re breaking out of their cases and they’re cicadas!”
Then he stopped. “We’ve got to get nearer,” he said. “We need to look at them from close. They’re too high.” Poppy said Yes, they needed a ladder or something. “They’re a long way up the tree, Jack” she said. And then they both didn’t know what to say, because there was no ladder or anything.
Jack and Poppy stepped back and looked at each other. “They’re too high for us, Poppy,” Jack told her. Poppy nodded. She felt a little upset feeling stirring and purring inside her. “How can we get up there, Jack?”
Jack looked around. There were some branches lying on the ground near them and he said maybe they could get them and make a big pile. And then climb up. Like a stairway. Poppy thought that might work and they scurried and hurried and gathered up big armfulls of old branches that were all over the ground.
“Keep going!” Jack called out. “Make the pile bigger, Poppy!” And Poppy panted and puffed and got more and more branches. And their stack of branches got higher and higher. Then Jack found a really big branch. And Poppy found a couple of twisted ones and threw them up on top of their pile. It was really growing.
“Do you think that’s high enough, Poppy?” Jack asked. Poppy said, “Maybe. Let’s test it.” And so they took each other’s hands and slowly and carefully and gently began to climb the pile. They tried to make it not wobble and wibble.
“It’s sort of like a stairway,” Poppy muttered. Jack thought it was, but he didn’t say anything. He was too busy concentrating and making sure he didn’t knock any of the branches and make the pile fall down.
Then they were at the top. And they were high enough! Just inches away from their faces three brand new cicadas were heaving and tugging and squeezing out of the little brown monster cases.
“Look at them!” Poppy squealed quietly. “They’re really new cicadas, Jack!” And Jack grinned and nodded. They were amazing and Jack and Poppy just stared and stared.
“Jack, this is really good.” Jack said it was and that they should scoot back and tell mum. So they helped each other very carefully down the stairway they’d made, and then tumbled and bumbled and ran and flew down through the long grass down and down to the footpath and around the corner to their gate and went sliding and hiding into home.
“Mum, we saw them!” Jack called. Mum came bustling with a big smile. “Wonderful!” she said. “Usually they come out early and we don’t see them.” Poppy said they got up close and it was amazing.
“Then that’s just like the time Jesus was born,” mum said. “When he was born was a very special time but not a lot of people knew about it.” Then she looked at her phone. “Hmm” she said. “Your dad’s going to be here any minute. Would you like to help me get ready? You can tell him about the cicada monsters.”
Jack and Poppy laughed and jumped and they said they hoped dad wouldn’t be too scared by the monsters.