The other day, a man called the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to ask why the crickets weren’t chirping in the city this summer. “That’s strange,” said Dr. John Luhman, a research scientist, taxonomist, and longtime cricket enthusiast. “I heard them while riding my bike just yesterday. The crickets haven’t gone anywhere—you’d better take another listen.”
Perhaps the crickets couldn’t compete with the air conditioning, which was set to full power for most of July. Or maybe the caller was simply getting ahead of himself; Twin Cities crickets don’t really get up to speed in the chirping department until late summer. But when the time comes, those of us who enjoy a twilight stroll or sleeping with the bedroom windows open can’t escape the cricket’s noble song. And why would we want to?
An insect of the night who doesn’t emerge into maturity until the hottest months, the cricket may be the backyard’s most admired bug. His popularity was first established in ancient China, where aristocrats kept crickets as pets both for nighttime music and afternoon entertainment. Crickets are quite pugnacious, at least when starved, and thus cricket fighting enjoyed popularity among elites from the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) through the Qing Dynasty (until 1911). Some even say the Song Dynasty (AD 1127-1279) met its demise in part because of cricket bouts; Jia Sidao, the dynasty’s last premier, supposedly neglected important political affairs to watch his littlest warriors.
Luhman speculates that crickets’ sedentary nature accounts for much of their popularity, since the insects remain happy in cages and “you can make them do things. Like fight.” Cricket fighting continues even today, though mostly underground—which maybe seems more logical than rational. (Are there any fighting critters too small to attract the anti-cruelty crusaders?) A secret “entomological Fight Club” in Hong Kong was busted by police in 2004, netting one thousand dollars in cash and more than two hundred buffed-up crickets. Little bugs apparently mean big money, though one wonders exactly how many tickets can be sold for a live event of such tiny magnitude.
Crickets may be fighters, but they’re best known as lovers. They play the dating game as earnestly as we do, and males work tirelessly to play “love songs” that will attract members of the opposite sex. A female picks the best “musician” as her mate, then receives what Luhman called “gifts of candy”—a sweet secretion sipped from a small basin located behind the wings of the male seducer. And romance isn’t the only song in the cricket’s vast repertoire. There are distinct chirps for all sorts of situations: soft if a female is nearby, aggressive when challenging a male intruder, and loud and fast when a predator is closing in. Actually, the cricket’s tympanic organs can vibrate well beyond the sensitivity of human ears, which means we’re only getting the low end of the cricket grand symphony.
There’s a cricket celebrity (Jiminy), a cricket thermometer (the number of chirps per fifteen seconds, plus forty), a cricket mantelpiece (a brass good-luck charm), and cricket cuisine. Southern Louisiana’s Fluker Farms is the self-proclaimed “leader in live cricket production” as feed for pet reptiles. It sells boxed quantities of 250, five hundred, or one thousand, as well as smaller numbers of chocolate-covered crickets, which are not for lizards, but humans. Crickets are said to be crunchy and high in protein, and the Fluker variety comes with an “I Ate a Bug Club” lapel badge for “adventurous connoisseurs.”
Though most humans’ affinity for crickets might stop short of a meal (“unpleasant eating,” was Luhman’s considered opinion), their songs and amorous personalities do jibe nicely with our relaxed late-summer sensibilities. “You’re not going to be anywhere outdoors after June where there won’t be crickets sounding,” said Luhman. “It’s nostalgic—people associate the sound with nice memories from the summertime.”—Adam Fetcher
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