Chapter 3 Cricket's vibrant home
Poetically dwelling.
In summer, in the grass, we can often see a beautiful little insect, and that is crickets. Like cicadas, they are well known by people. Moreover, they are even more famous than cicadas. If the mere fact that crickets can sing is not enough to show their talents, it is even more praised that this little insect has built its nest so well that you can't help but admire them.
In nature, most insects choose a temporary shelter to protect themselves from wind and rain, and if they see a favorite place on the way out, they will temporarily live there, and they will not modify the residence, as long as they can live there. When they hide in their burrows, if they happen to catch one or two more prey, they will sigh that life is so good!
But that's not the case with crickets. They are very different, and when they grow up, they will build their own stable little family, and they will put a lot of effort into this small family. The fact that the fixed shelter is warm and cozy, and the crickets can stay in it to escape the cold wind, and their days will be pleasant, which also fully shows that the cricket is a small insect with intelligence and foresight.
When choosing a place to build a nest, crickets never regard those natural hideaways as their first choice, let alone those ready-made rough burrows because they are lazy, but carefully choose those places that are easy to drain, sunny and warm, and then dig patiently, from the hall to the bedroom, everything is done by themselves, never sparing their own efforts.
In front of the crickets' dwellings, there is often lush grass covering the holes. This is specially chosen by the little guy so that the entrance to the cave will be very hidden and not easy to spot. Entering through the hole, it is about twenty centimeters deep and as wide as a human finger. Depending on the topography, the tunnel may be curved or vertical. There are living rooms in the residences and of course bedrooms as well. As long as the crickets have the time to work, the walls will be trimmed. At the bottom of the tunnel is the bedroom, which is more spacious and of course more detailed. Overall, it's a very simple home, very clean and dry, and it's nice to live in!On a sunny day, the crickets walked out of the house, basking in the sun, eating some grass, and singing songs, and lived a happy life. Like rabbits, crickets never eat the grass on the edge of the nest, because the grass is used to cover the exit, and you think it's very shrewd
Although they have a stable home, the crickets live very carefully inside, always keeping an eye on the wind and grass outside. When you walk past, no matter how light your steps or how small your voice is, this little thing can sense your arrival, and it immediately reacts vigilantly, ready to flee to a safer place at any time. When you go to the cave and try to catch this little thing, it has already fled.
The trivialities of your baby's life.
The cricket usually lays its eggs in less than an inch of soil below the ground, and it arranges these eggs in groups of about five or six hundred. When the eggs hatch, they resemble a long, gray-white bottle with a neat round hole in the top. Two weeks after the eggs are laid, two large, round black dots appear at the front end, and on the top of the head of the long bottle, there is a thin protruding line that surrounds it, and the shell will crack off from this line in the future. Because the eggs are transparent, we can see the knots on the little one's body. Around the protruding line, the firmness of the shell gradually decreases, and one end of the egg slowly separates, which is pushed open by the head of the little one inside. The shell rose and fell to the side, like the lid of a small perfume bottle. Crickets jump out of the "bottle".
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It can't be called a cricket just out of its shell, it would be more accurate to say a large grub wrapped in swaddling clothes, which wears a straitjacket. After taking off its swaddling clothes, the cricket's whole body is almost grayish-white, and it begins to wrestle with the dirt. It picks up the dirt with its jaws, sweeps it to the side or kicks it behind it. Soon, it was on the surface, illuminated by the warm sun. At this time, its body is still very weak, and it is not as big as a flea. After a day and a night, the baby cricket turned black, and its appearance was basically the same as that of an adult cricket, except that it still had a grayish-white ring on its chest. From time to time, it probed everything around it with its long, often trembling tentacles, and jumped around excitedly.
When the weather starts to get cold, the crickets start building their own homes. They find a place to be covered by grass or leaves, dig the ground with their forefeet, bite off relatively large rocks with their large jaws, and step on the ground with their thick hind legs, which have two rows of jagged things. The crickets dusted them and rolled them out at an angle. In the beginning, the crickets were very energetic and did it quickly. After a while, it ran to the door to rest. After resting enough, the cricket turned around and went back to work. The main body of the house has been built, the hole is more than two inches wide, and there is no problem in dealing with emergencies, as for the meticulous decoration work, it can be done slowly, and the crickets are not in a hurry. When you have free time, do a little today and a little tomorrow, and the enlargement and deepening of the hole is carried out as the weather changes and the body grows. Even in the cold winter months, if the weather is nice, you can see the little guy throwing dirt outside the hole. This grooming work will stay with the cricket for the rest of its life, and the work will not really end until it dies.
Delicate musical instruments.
By the end of April, the crickets tell us about their arrival with their beautiful songs. At first, it may be a solo, but later, it evolves into a passionate chorus.
Some people may ask, how do crickets play such a beautiful **?Let's take a look at their instruments!
Actually, the instrument of the cricket is very simple, just a simple bow with a hook and a diaphragm on it. Its right-wing sheath covers the left-wing sheath, almost entirely, except for the part that wraps around the back and the side of the body at the turn. The structure of the two wing sheaths is exactly the same, with thin veins on them, and the wing sheath is laid flat on the back of the cricket, and the side suddenly slanted down at right angles, tightly wrapping the body. If you uncover one of the two wing sheaths and look closely at the light, you will see that the wing sheath is pale red, except for the two connected places, a large triangle in front and a small oval in the back with faint wrinkles, both of which are the cricket's sounders.
On the tail edge of the front section, there are two curved and parallel veins, and there is a gap in the middle of the veins. There were five or six black wrinkles in the void, which looked like the rungs of a ladder. They are used for friction and can increase the number of contact points of the bow and enhance the sense of vibration. Underneath, one of the two veins that surrounds the void becomes ribbed and hooked, which is the bow.
This instrument is really beautiful, with one hundred and fifty teeth on it, embedded in the rungs of the wing sheath opposite, so that the four sounders vibrate at the same time, the lower two directly rub to make sounds, and the upper two make sounds due to the vibration of the friction instruments. Crickets use these four sounders to transmit ** hundreds of meters away, and the tone sounds very rapid!
At first I thought that both bows of crickets were useful, but after observation I learned that almost all crickets have a right-wing sheath covering the left-wing sheath. I tested on a lot of crickets, and I put their left wing sheath on the right wing sheath. However, these clever little ones can always adjust their wing sheaths, and let the right wing sheath cover the left one, and then they start singing, and there is really nothing they can do with them. These little ** families also have the ability to adjust the pitch and rhythm of the sound, which depends on the part of the wing sheath that is pressed by the bow, and at the same time, it will also be affected by the position of the wing sheath. If the cricket wants to make a higher sound, the wing sheath will be raised high, and if it wants to make a lower sound, the wing sheath will be lowered. The little crickets are very easy to operate. It feels so good to lie on the soft grass on a starry summer night and listen to the beautiful and beautiful song of the crickets!
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