The Wonderful Ways of Insects and Spiders [ 259 



Crickets Join the Insect Serenade: The chirpy, cheerful cricket 

 produces music with its wings in the same way as the katydid, 

 but usually with its right wing over the left whereas the katydid, 

 as we have seen, rubs its left wing over the right. To a listening 

 youngster it may seem that the katydids dominate the insect 

 serenade; but crickets contribute their share of the melodious 

 performance. The tune of the common snowy tree cricket begins 

 as a musical waa-waa-waa, played by individuals, each "on his 

 own." But soon they join forces and play as if they were following 

 a conductor's baton. 



Crickets As Weather Forecasters: The performance of the snowy 

 tree cricket is directly related to the temperature. By counting 

 the number of notes it produces each minute, you can roughly 

 gauge what your thermometer registers. Thus, a hundred chirps 

 to the minute indicate a temperature of 63 degrees. Increasing its 

 tempo as the temperature rises, this cricket slows down when it 

 gets cooler. 



The common black crickets, with their clear chirp, are the first 

 musicians you will hear in summer. You may often discover them, 

 by late August, if you turn over an old board or stone. They 

 run fast but despite their muscular-looking legs they do not 

 imitate the grasshopper's high-jumping tactics. 



Cricket on the Hearth: The cricket that may serenade you from 

 indoors after cool weather begins is not necessarily the same kind 

 about which Dickens wrote so appealingly in England; but the 

 American field cricket is also a cheery visitor to have on the 

 hearth. The European cricket is now quite well established in 

 the eastern United States and is a persistent fiddler. Unfortunately, 

 once these musicians are indoors they do not limit their activities 

 to music but may get into food and eat holes in everything made 

 of cloth. 



How To Keep Cricket Pets: In the natural state, not many crickets 

 survive the coming of frost. However, if they are adopted as pets, 

 they will often live through the winter with every appearance of 

 enjoying themselves. You can make a cage for a cricket very 

 simply with a flowerpot full of earth and a kerosene lamp chimney. 



