It All Started With A Spray Of Bullets

It was quite unusual as far as this area went when a spray of bullets hit a home a couple blocks over back in 2017 in a drive by shooting. The local news featured a man who had lived in the neighborhood for decades saying that twenty years ago all you could hear around here at night was crickets. That's when it struck me that we weren't just getting a bit barren on bee's around here but that was what was missing from the natural landscape at night, the sound of crickets chirping. I attributed the loss of bees to three overzealous neighbors on my block who felt it pertinent to have their lawns sprayed by one of those professional companies who come to spray your lawn then place those danger this lawn has been sprayed with pesticide signs. The couple of houses down at the end of the block quit doing it after all the publicity about the decline in bees and how these companies may be responsible for some of the loss but not the anal lady who lived two doors down. She was quite the trip always complaining about something. If a dog pooped in her yard she'd scoop it up and place it in the walk way up to my porch. I was the only one on this side the block with a dog so my dog was responsible for every dog who pooped in her yard. After about fifteen years she finally moved out a couple years ago and I can't say I was unhappy to see her go.

You would think I'd be the last person who'd miss the sound of crickets at night. Many years ago when I had to get up early to go to work there was a cricket who lived by my front porch. He was loud. Really, really loud. He drove me crazy at night and I swore one night I'd track him down then drive him fifty miles away. Thing was though he was an incredibly smart cricket, he knew every time I'd open my front door and he'd stop chirping. As soon as I'd get back in bed he'd start chirping again. I hated that cricket with a passion. I don't know whatever finally did happen with him outside of maybe he met up with a more formidable foe then myself, like the lady who lived two doors down. They often say you don't miss what you got until it's gone and well as far as the nature of things lots of things have gone in the city. When I was a kid growing up one of our favor past times was catching grasshoppers and butterflies, now the closest kids in the city get to grasshoppers and butterflies are imaginary ones in cartoons or storybooks. You go for a couple of weeks without hardly any rain and the landscape of the city can get pretty desolate looking with all that grass browning out. It's a still, hot, emotional-less experience of nature replaced by increased traffic of cars, fireworks and occasionally the sound of gunfire.

I decide I was going to a pet shop to buy some crickets. I told the lady at the pet shop that I wanted to hear the sounds of crickets chirping again. She inquired if I was aware that the crickets wouldn't stay in my yard whereas I replied I was more worried about the birds eating them. It was one of those gotcha asking me a stupid question moments. My backyard has a fairly good tree line with heavy undergrowth of shrubs, rocks and old timber, I figured with enough crickets there'd be a few who'd find some cozy spot to hang out back there for the summer. That's the way it pretty much worked out for the summer, some found their cozy spots. I highly doubted there'd be any the next year as the pet store said the suppliers do something to the crickets to keep them from reproducing. Most crickets are sold as feed to people's pets and they don't want people to breed their own crickets. I thought that pretty much held true since the next year I didn't hear any crickets for quite some time but some managed to breed or they survived the winter somehow back there, just as I was giving up hope of hearing crickets my grandson was outside with me one night and he said grandma do you hear the crickets. I was surprised as I stood there a second listening to what he was hearing and sure enough it was crickets. This year though the only place so far I am hearing crickets is everywhere but my neighborhood.

The other night taking my grand kids home there was a cricket by their front door making really loud cricket chirps. First thing I said was I want that cricket. He laughed, he replied they'd love to get rid of that cricket he'd been there for a couple of weeks driving them crazy. They live in an apartment complex and the cricket had taken up in a small split between bricks leading to the steps that went up to the second floor apartments. A couple of days later I asked him if he had caught that cricket yet. He said he was still trying to figure out how to get him out of the crack without hurting it. A couple hours later he calls me and says he caught the cricket. I told him I'd come get the cricket so it wouldn't die if left overnight in a container. I get the cricket and on the way home I am said sing cricket sing...and amazingly he started chirping. He was chirping so loudly you'd thought he was bigger than the container that contained him. I got home I released him into my flower bed, I was sure if he was happy living in a crack in an apartment building he'd be happy finding a crack somewhere along the base of the stone foundation. After two, three minutes he started chirping then he'd stop, then he chirp then stop again. This went on for several minutes and I couldn't figure out why he'd stop chirping. Then I started wondering if crickets sent out sounds to other crickets and if they were chirping back and forth to each other. If that was the case I started feeling horrible, he was the only cricket in the hood, he could chirp all night without hearing the call of another cricket. The next morning I had gotten up early, I had turned on my computer when I realized I could hear the cricket chirping. He had made it from the front yard to the side yard somewhere below the front bedroom side window, still feeling the guilt I decided to look up why crickets do chirp, in some ways I felt a whole lot better but in other ways I felt a whole lot worse.

For one some of you may be wondering why I know it's a him cricket and not a her, that's because female crickets don't chirp. Males send out varying what they call stridulations, stridulations happen when crickets rub their wings together. Some people think it's the legs but it's actually what is known as their forewings being rubbed together. The varying part is crickets send out different stridulations depending on if they are trying to attract/court a female cricket or a stridulation to warn other male crickets that this is his territory. So I felt really good that he wouldn't encounter any aggressors wanting to tread on his territory but I felt really bad that he wasn't going to get laid either no matter what falsetto he decided to churn out. Now a little more than twenty four hours later he's made his way out into the backyard into that tree line of heavy shrubs, rocks and timber while churning out his stridulations in hopes of attracting himself a mate.

Why couldn't I ever catch that cricket so many years ago who drove me crazy? Crickets don't have ears like humans. They have what is called tympanal organs on their forewings that vibrate in response to vibrating air molecules sent out by noise in the surrounding air, a receptor called a chordotonal organ transits the vibration from the tympanal organ to the crickets brain, when this happens the cricket stops chirping to protect itself from predators or others like humans they perceive as a threat. Therefore the trick to catching a cricket is to stand still and wait for it to start chirping again, when it detects your vibrations and stops chirping you stand still again, you repeat this process as you continue advancing toward the sound whereas you will eventually come upon the cricket transmitting the sound.