Back to the silence

There is nothing like it when you can hear the birds sing their beautiful songs. To listen to the breeze rustling through the trees or the rippling sound of a flowing stream. To hear the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets at night. It is a pleasure to hear such silence over the cacophony of the sound of the cities.

Oh! The crickets at night. Well let's get back to the crickets. At night, outside our bedroom window, I can hear the crickets transmitting their messages from one to another. they don't use cell phones so sometimes they have to be loud to get their message to go long distances. There are times I feel like a tower and that they are transmitting right through me.

These crickets are the loudest I've ever heard and they sound different. Extended notes like a bow pulled across the strings of a violin. At times the bow would bounce creating a musical flow of several notes. What kind of cricket are these? From the high volume of the noise I surmised they had to be big. Maybe as big as baby dinosaurs. Well maybe not that big but I did hear frogs in the distance and they seemed to be staying away from these crickets.

They were even active during the day so I went outside on a safari to hunt them down. Every step I took vibrated the ground and drove the critters to silence. I had to stand still, wait and listen for the next stringing of the violins. Then move toward it and repeat the process. I heard but never saw them.

But I did notice a few crayfish wholes in the area. Could this have been crayfish making the sounds? More research is needed.

- to be continued -