HOUSE AND GARDEN 
August, 
1914 
“We become so accustomed to hearing the chirp of our caged 
crickets that, if an intruder were to enter the house, the insects 
would stop singing. Then we would be awakened—by the 
silence.” 
What a novel burglar alarm! But we can see the logic of the 
argument. To prove it is but to travel a few days at sea and have 
the engines suddenly stop at night. 
A collection of singing insects may be started by the middle of 
June, when the chirp of crickets and hum 
of the lesser cone-headed locust comes 
from the meadows. Later we may collect 
the meadow katy-did and its much finer- 
"voiced” ally, the greater katy-did, the 
smaller field crickets and the sweet-sing¬ 
ing "tree” cricket—the latter, incidentally, 
usually found on low bushes. Among 
these creatures will be heard a variety of 
sounds from humming and rasping to the 
really talkative notes of the katy-dids and 
various trills and jingles among the crick¬ 
ets that are highly pleasing. The feeding 
menu for them is very simple: corn silk, 
meadow flowers, oak leaves and sliced 
apple. 
The principal sport in maintaining a 
collection of singing insects is the stalk¬ 
ing and capturing of the specimens. 
Crickets are easy to find under stones, but 
the meadow locusts must be hunted with 
great care. Let us suppose we have de¬ 
cided on a June hunt for cone-headed lo¬ 
custs, an insect that produces a soft and 
continuous lisping song in the meadows 
during June, July and August. It looks 
like a large and flattened grasshopper, 
with extremely long jumping legs and elongated pointed wings 
which fold flat against the body. The green coloration gives it 
the appearance of a pointed leaf or coarse blade of grass. Its 
cone-like head adds to the deception and it roosts on long-stemmed 
vegetation. When disturbed the insect runs down the stalk to 
its base and is almost impossible to detect from a sprouting leaf. 
We cannot capture these insects by day, for they are keen of 'sight, 
and while they begin singing late in the afternoon, their song is 
intermittent and stops as soon as they note the presence of the 
hunter. The best time to capture them is at night, when the 
collector stalks the loudest singers and by approaching within 
definite investigating distance can accurately locate the insects 
by bringing into use an electric flash-lamp. The glare of the light 
usually causes the insect to stop its calls, but it remains motionless 
upon a branch or leaf and may be 
grasped with a delicate pair of forceps, 
provided the movements of the collec¬ 
tor’s arms are performed outside the 
rays of light. If the locust has become 
silent and cannot be detected when the 
light is thrown upon it, the collector sim¬ 
ply switches off the lamp and remains 
quiet. In a few minutes the creature' 
continues its song, when its exact location 
is again determined. Working in this 
manner the capture of the larger singing 
insects is a comparatively simple matter, 
and one soon becomes skilled in the sport. 
What the hunter should first look for is 
not the insect’s body, which in color ex¬ 
actly matches the surrounding vegeta¬ 
tion, but the long, waving antennae. These may soon be detected 
by an eye becoming trained in the work, while the outlines of the 
leaf-green body are extremely hard to see unless the insect is 
moving. In this way the night songsters of a big meadow are 
collected one by one and the collector leaves behind him a silent 
field that a few hours before resounded with the stridulations of 
the locust chorus. 
Right here let us understand an important fact about these 
singers. All of them are males. Among 
the insects the females are always silent, 
and in greatly inferior numbers listen to 
the gay serenade coming from all sides. 
In vain the chanting Lotharios continue 
their calls, usually for weeks, until with 
the mating period the few females con¬ 
descend to issue forth and display their 
charms upon the pollen-soft platforms of 
the wild carrot blossoms. 
To search for the elusive and talkative 
katy-did — that is, the larger and arboreal 
species — requires considerable skill and 
ingenuity. This is the prize of all the 
singers and a really beautiful creature in 
its leaf-green garment of concave wings. 
Like all of the local singers possible to 
keep under observation, its song is pro¬ 
duced by hard and brittle patches at the 
base of the wings. By rubbing the edges 
of these together — scraping them, in fact 
— an amazing volume of sound is pro¬ 
duced. It matures about the middle of 
August and sings until the leaves com¬ 
mence to show touches of autumn color. 
As this is a tree-top songster, it is neces¬ 
sary to find country where the trees are 
low. The writer hunted his first specimens in an automobile 
provided with a swivel searchlight, but the tree-climbing expedi¬ 
tion was found to be far more difficult than stalking in the open 
meadows, because, in the former, the swaying of the branches 
caused the insects to stop singing before the investigator could 
get near enough to discover their exact whereabouts. Finally, in 
the hills of Westchester County, we found a grove of young 
trees, all of which could be easily climbed. When the collector 
went up the tree the vibration caused the insects to stop singing, 
but he roosted among the branches, and, armed with the flash- 
lamp, the wait was not long before the chorus again started. De¬ 
termining the branch on which the singer stood, this was shaken 
while a sheet was held open beneath the tree. “Considerable 
trouble for a few katy-dids!” says the reader. But what fun we 
had with those vociferous creatures! 
They sang until frost, and so demon¬ 
strative was the chorus that a parrot in a 
nearby residence learned the song and 
favored us with this the greater part of 
the day—then enthusiastically helped the 
insects themselves when they commenced 
to chatter at twilight. As a captive, the 
katy-did subsists solely upon oak leaves. 
The oak is its favorite food tree. 
There is real fun in maintaining a 
cricket cage. Crickets may be collected 
at any time of the day under flat stones 
in grassy meadows, where they may be 
heard singing. The females may be rec- 
ognied by the smooth, straight wings 
(Continued on page 113) 
The seventeen-year locust, a true bug, lives under¬ 
ground for seventeen years as a wingless npmp/i 
Despite its murderous reputation and appearances, the spider 
has deadly enemies among the insects themselves 
