Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1893-08-24
THEY FORTELL THE FROST

TaI cricket and the
Very Clipper Katydid.
The Tall cricket" came on the noe
tunral summer stage among these cool
New England hills on Wednesday even
ing, and sang his droning song under
the luminous sky all night. The fall
cricket, says the New York Sun, is q
thin, slim, shapely fellow, in a long
grass green ttoga, who is put up on
springs and built like the Stilleto craft
and the important thing about him, old
fashioned folks say. is that in exactly
SIX weeks after his appearance, the first
autumnal frost will fall. On astill, clear
evening, when he first appears, the old
folks say; ''The summer lis going.
The season is on the downhill side"
Abouthis song there is a penetrating, and
not loud, mournful, lonesome, falling,
and monotonous cadence, which rings
on, almost unbroken all night. Some
times, late in the fall, on a still, clouded
afternoon, he is heard long before the
sun goes down, and his song, together
with the falling leaves. embodies all
that is melancholy and eerie about the
autumn: He is a lonesome, shy hermit
like fellow, who sits all alone, high up
In the trees, and utters his lament I'M
tiringly. He is very different sort of
4 chap from the clipper katydid. His
single note has hollow, echoing effect,
and he drones on until long after frost
comes.
He is sort of Il second cousin to the
katydld, who appears at about the same
time, in the last week of July ort the first
one in August. and has similar oracle
to pronounce about Jack Frost. The
katydid, though, is q sociable, gregari-
Gus, noisy chap in Lincoln Green, with
a rafting, clickety- clack song, who loves
to gather in a great throng in the thick,
dark tree tops in shady country streets,
and shout, altogether, so loudly and
their own talk. Broadway, Norwich,
with it's ornate mansions and spacious
yards, uncovered in trees in a mile
long arch, is one of the katies' favorite
trysting places in the late summer and
fall, and it is within bounds to say that
there are a million there. Actually on
one serene summer evening last year
they made such hullabalOo that the
congregation in the Broadway Church,
at the foot of the hill, with the windows
open, couldn't hear half that the preach
er said, and the clergyman shortened
his sermon on account of the talkative
and irreverent katies. On another
street, not twenty rods away, not a katy
did is ever heard, and so it is with them
in all this region. They have certain
places, and others that have just as
many attractive trees, and, seemingly,
are just as eligible to be a TRUSTING place
for them, they never visit, and appar-
emily shun them with deliberate intent.
chronological students have remarked
this trait on the part of the katles, and
have never been able to explain it. One
beautiful, shady neighborhood in the
western part of the town is SO rarely
a lonely straggler, evidently a migrating
insect, is heard there all summer.
Another odd insect who begins to
make himself heard only when summer
is verginy into autumn is the corn
scraper" so called by the back-country
people of the remote hills because,
perching himself on stalk Of field corn
in the long cool fall nights he uses his
legs for a fiddle, and makes husky,
scraping sound like that of the corn
stalk fiddle the Connecticut country lad
makes of Joint of corn, Sitting two
sliyers of it and lifting them on wooden
peg bridges.
The katvdid and the fall cricket,
however-the one as jocund as gray
squirrel basking in the early yellow and
crisp October mornings, the other as
sad and dreary as gray ana melan-
cholv dav of November-are the only
insects that sing in early prophecy OF
coming fall Everybody in this land
believes sincerely in their prophetic
song, too. So everyone may now look
out sharp for frost before the harvest
moon fulis about the middle of Septem-