As I was walking along the island trail yesterday, I noticed a new adult cicada just emerged from its exoskeleton. It’s not one of the famous 17-year cicadas that periodically make the national news, but a simple annual Dog-Day Cicada (Tibicen canicularis), whose rasping buzzes fill the air along the Monocacy River every summer. This cicada was unique, however, for choosing to molt on the leaf of a Japanese Hop plant rather than on the bark of a tree, where cicada nymphs usually appear after feeding on the tree’s roots for 3 years.