Things that go meeeee-meeeee-meeeee in the night

Well the cicadas are finally out. I actually love the sound they make. The Japanese 'sound' is meee-meee-meeee. I'd describe it as crickets singing. Very relaxing in my opinion. They can be surprisingly loud though. Despite their lovely sound, these are ugly, nasty, freak out bugs. Yuck. They're big too - around 8 to 10 cm for the ones I've seen.
When I first came to Japan and was working at a conversation school, one of my students thought a dead cicada in perfect condition would make a pleasant gift. She pulled it out of her pocket, slowly unwrapped it as it was bundled in tissue, and then thrust it in my face. I jumped about five feet in the air. 'That's ok thank-you... it is such a nice cicada, you should keep it. I couldn't possibly keep that for myself.' Yikes.