Letter From America: Anyone For Cricket?
So what is that droning sound emanating from some place near Ronnie Bray's garden wall? Could it be a singing tree? Read on - and find out.
Just in case anyone was wondering, wildlife is not confined to North West Montana. We have plenty of it here in the Arizona desert.
It came to my attention the first night we spent in our home in Mesa. Stepping outside to take in the cool evening air – a mere 90 degrees – I heard what I took to be the high-pitched drone of overhead electrical wires. However, finding no wires above the ground, I imitated Charlie Chan and detected that the cause of the loud sound was a Palo Verde tree situated immediately outside the back garden wall.
"A singing tree," I mused. "How deucedly odd!" I stepped inside the patio doors and drew Gay’s attention to this singular phenomenon. She laughed and corrected my notion. "They’re crickets." She said, adding, "you had better get used to them!"
I am getting used to them. One major reason I am getting used to them is that they are so plentiful. Walt Disney put a human face on crickets when he created Jiminy Cricket, and, therefore, I am careful where I plant my feet when in the garden.
The crickets don’t bother me at all. Not even the one that lives inside the bathroom fan vent. He starts his fiddling when the light goes on, and continues until he is in the dark once more. I feel sorry for the lonesome fellow because his courtship ritual is doomed to fail miserably because all the other crickets are outside hopping through the grass and occasionally straying onto the patio slab.
Yet, perhaps he has found his personal bomb-proof shelter in the ducting, because our romp-about puppy, Belle, loves nothing more than stalking the little creatures and snapping at them with her snow-white teeth until they are barely recognisable. I regard this as unfortunate for the crickets, but all part of the cycle of nature that I am helpless to arrest.
It has a downside for the insects, and a downside for the unwary who walks through our bedroom in bare feet, due to Belle’s habit of using our bedroom carpet as a cricket morgue. The soft underfoot crunching of littler exoskeletal bodies in a variety of limblessness can be somewhat disturbing to the sensitive soul.
And thus it is that "Cricket" - O hallowed sport – is once again a regular theme of conversation in the Bray household. Anyone for cricket? Bring your own dog!
Copyright © Ronnie Bray 2004
