I was walking to our shed along the dirt path through the woods and noticed whhat appeared to be a VERY large pile of earthworm castings, almost the size of a crawdad pile but not quite right. It looked like a pile of perfectly rounded mud balls, all packed together. THen I gave it more thought and assumed it was where one of the burrowing wasps in our yard had laid its eggs and capped off the hole, though I'd never seen them using mud, just the loose backfill from the hole. This was different. I bent down to really have a look and though it was still damp looking, I gave it a slight nudge...and it popped off in my hand to reveal a tunnel underneath, about twice the size of a pencil. I gently recapped it, thinking again, 'wasp' and went back to get my husband to have him come look and hazard a guess. When we came back together, he too lifted the'lid' and to my surprise there was a cicada nymph perched in the hole. SO that's what this is...but I'd never seen them make a tight pile of mud balls over their tunnels. My usual observations of them had them just digging on out, climbing a tree or something handy, and beginning the long process of molting.

something new to add to the list, I guess. It gets longer by the day!