JOY ALONG THE WAY: WHISPERINGS OF COMING AUTUMN

The crickets, with their comforting little fiddlin's, were late in coming this year. All through July and August I listened for them. Didn't even hear the sound of a tune-up on an E natural string, which is two octaves above Middle C as entomologist S.H. Scudder declares the pitch of the common black cricket to be. But now they are making up, loudly, for their summer's absence. At least that is the case around my house, garage, fence and garden seat corners. Why do crickets seem to prefer corners? Is it that they don't like anyone at their backs? A common desire.

Every year I write a little paean of praise for the cricket song. To me it is a drowsy, sweet, languorous attestation that all is well and there's plenty of time. Don't hurry. Don't worry. Facts tell me that their songs are utilitarian mating calls. Well, that's all right too. What's wrong with cricket love songs, day time, night time, any old time? E natural, F sharp or B flat?

The late naturalist, Hal Borland, said a cricket is a noise surrounded by a sentimental aura. Isn't that good? Sort of like wind in the willows and the murmuring pines and hemlocks. Unbodied sound.

Sometimes I think Borland is right. Try to catch a cricket by stealthy pursuit. When you're within five steps, he hushes and when he starts up again, he is in a place farther off, just a moving sound. I use the pronoun, he, for it is the male that sings, or fiddles, or makes a noise, whatever it is to you.

Other September voices without bodies are tired old leaves in the cottonwoods. I go to stand under the big cottonwood on the far side of the Park and listen to what I imagine them to be saying when the wind stirs their stiffening leaves.

"My skin is drying and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Well, my veins are growing narrow and the sap can't seem to get through as it did."

"Have you heard? The chlorophyll factories are closing."

"I don't have to hear. Just look at those sweet gums over there. They sure do make a colorful gala of their chlorophyll factories' closings."

"What's going to happen to us?"

"Why, we're going to fall to the ground to make rich humus for cottonwood seeds to sprout and make us live on forever in other leaves at other times."

As I watch, one leaf, evidently wishing to move on to other humus sites, falls off and lands in the little flowing stream below. I look around and see other items of early autumn's silent floating cargo. There goes some milkweed floss, and a long floating spider web, on the end of which there is supposed to be a tiny spider, moving on.

The monarch butterflies haven't put in their migrating appearance yet around my eyesight domain. Maybe they're just too high or maybe its just not cool enough for them to think Mexico. That's where Midwestern monarchs go to spend the winter.

Thinking to help the monarchs build up their population, I let a milkweed grow among my flowers this summer. Up, up, up it went, stately, big-leaved, an out-of-place thing. From time to time I looked on the underneath side of the leaves, trying to find some butterfly eggs or their next stage, the caterpillar. No luck. Finally I gave up and struck down the mighty plant which didn't even blossom so that I could smell its fragrance. Oh, well. It will make rich humus for other milkweeds.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.