Crickets. Male crickets chirp at about 100 decibels; about the same as a referee’s whistle. And they chirp all night. Right outside my bedroom window. At 100 decibels. All night long. Virginia thinks they are soothing and she goes right to sleep. For me, they are like the water torture of a dripping faucet.
A while ago we stayed with friends in Wellington. They generously gave us their master bedroom during our visit which had an adjoining bathroom. The faucet in the bathroom leaked. Drip, drip, drip all night long. We called that to their attention thinking that they may want to get that fixed in case their water bill started to get expensive. They explained that they don’t pay for water. There is no utility bill for water in Wellington. Hence there was no urgency to fix the drip, drip, drip.
It is the male crickets that are the problem. They rub their wings together to try to attract a female. “Hey baby, look at my wings. Come on over. Let’s party.” Typical male. Personally, I think they have it all wrong. If I were a female cricket, I would be really annoyed at their ridiculous wing-rubbing carrying on. And the hotter it gets, the louder those little buggers chirp. You would think they would wear their wings out with all that rubbing. Non stop. Every second. Every minute. Every bloody hour. All night long. They are chirping right now as I write this. It is cooler tonight, so they aren’t quite as loud as last night. But last night they were loud. They were really loud. And it was hot outside and hot inside. With the bedroom windows wide open to try to let some cooler air in, what came in was mostly the sound of horny male crickets.
Many years ago my sister, Julie, rode her motorcycle to my apartment in Concord, California from Seattle, Washington. She arrived in Concord while I was at work and decided to wait for me outside my apartment until I got off work. While she was waiting, she heard a cricket. She had never seen a cricket and since she had time, she decided to search for the cricket. With her bike parked on the street, she thought she heard the cricket in some nearby bushes so she got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the bushes searching for the little chirper. Well, one of my neighbors must have wondered what this hippy looking person was doing crawling around in the bushes outside the apartment building and called the police. The Concord police having nothing better to do decided to check in on the person crawling around in the bushes. The police car pulled up next to Julie’s motorcycle, called in the license plate, got out of the patrol car and asked Julie what exactly she was doing. “Looking for crickets”, she calmly replied. Apparently, it is not a crime to look for crickets so they encouraged her to move on and leave the crickets alone. Julie assured them that she was just waiting for me to get home. But she got the hint and decided to look for crickets another day.
So, crickets are just trouble. I’m sure they don’t mean to be trouble. Although the whole point of rubbing their wings together is to try to get lucky, so in that sense, they are, indeed, looking for a little trouble. Chirp, chirp, chirp.
Husbandry 