On a late August evening as I sat watching darkness fall while the sun slipped out of sight beyond the western tree line, I could hear the periodic bubbly song of a tree frog.
Why it was singing this late in the fall I have no idea, as most frog song is heard in the spring. Perhaps it just wanted to join in with the crickets’ and grasshoppers’ see-sawing rhythm that choruses each night from the long grass area beyond the short-cut lawn.
There seems to be an abundance of crickets and grasshoppers this year. The greater moisture from the summer rains seems to have agreed with them. I didn’t really pay much attention to them until just lately, and then it seems that all I hear is their persistent, screechy calls.
Growing up on the farm during the no-money years of the lagging Great Depression left me with insects, frogs, lizards, birds, bees, toads and butterflies as my main source of self-entertainment. I found it great fun to slip a silk thread knot over a bumblebee’s leg as it delved deep into a flower in search of nectar. It could fly quite well when so tethered and could be easily directed in whichever direction you should so want.
Mostly, the direction so wanted was towards my screaming sisters and their squeamish country friends. I can still hear their screeching late at night when I dream and, on awakening, it is once again fun just to remember.
Crickets and grasshoppers would keep me occupied for several hours each day. My father had allowed me to purchase a pair of Old English game bantams from a neighbouring friend, who lived the second house beyond the local church, and with them came seven newly hatched chicks.
The hen and the rooster cost me ten cents each, and the chicks were thrown in free of charge. The reason, I heard later, was that the rooster distractingly and repeatedly crowed in answer to the wheezing organ being played in the open-windowed church.
Though grain was readily available to feed them, I enjoyed watching them chase, catch and eat escaping insects. I would take a pop bottle in each hand and head out to the grain fields around newly-shocked sheaves and catch as many crickets and grasshoppers as I possibly could. Crickets in one bottle, grasshoppers in the other, most times better than a dozen in each.
Back at the bantams’ fenced enclosure, I would lay the bottles end to end on their side and watch the tiny flock scramble to catch them. It was amazing how quickly they learned how to be patient and wait for the insects to crawl out of the small-necked bottles.
When the chicks were small, it was usually the little hen that repeatedly clucked while doing all of the catching, and by preparation pecking, she would turn the lifeless food over to her waiting young.
The rooster, typical of most masculine creeds, strutted and crowed again and again, bragging of the hard work he’d just done. “Cock-a-doodle-do” to you too.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105