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The air was tremulous with heavenly notes, the lights went out in the hall, dusk swept across the stage, a cricket sang and a katydid answered, and a wood pewee wrung the heart with its lonesome cry. Then a night hawk screamed, a whip-poor-will complained, a belated killdeer swept the sky, and the night wind sang a louder song.
Again, it was not the fact that they lived among leaves which made them look leaflike, but it is because they look like leaves that they escaped being devoured. The katydid has materially assisted in its own preservation by being active chiefly at night. In the daytime it keeps comparatively quiet. Thus seated upon a twig, especially if hidden among the leaves, it is almost unnoticeable.
The scent of the woods, and the peculiar aroma of a great yet unreap'd maize-field near by the white butterflies in every direction by day the golden-rod, the wild asters, and sunflowers the song of the katydid all night.
Jerry O'Keefe broke into a cold sweat of panic and he sat with his ears strained for a pistol shot a shout any indication that might call him across the moonlight zone beyond the door to her defense. But the stillness of the midsummer night had settled again, except for the voices of the whippoorwill and the katydid.
As a result they cannot be expected to hunt far for their food. Different insects use different devices by which to overcome this difficulty. The katydid, for instance, must die with the approach of fall. Her children will not appear until the following year.
"So what's the use of their being in the procession?" "Oh, that's all right!" Chirpy Cricket assured him. "They're going to carry the banners." When Chirpy Cricket mentioned "banners," Mehitable Moth, Kiddie Katydid, and Moses Mosquito stepped forward with looks of pride on their faces so far as one could see their faces by the glimmer of the flashing lights of the Firefly family.
"Why, it's a p'epperation, or a plan of some kind," explained Zene. "So she invites Big Ant Black and all her family, and the spider and all his family, and the beetles and bugs and all their families, and the snake-feeders and Miss Katydid for young folks, and don't leave out a neighbor, to an apple-bee right inside the orchard fence.
Kiddy Katydid and his relatives were in possession of a secret that none of the Pleasant Valley folk can solve, though they waste much time and energy trying to guess it. Even to this day it is doubtful if anyone other than Kiddie himself really knows what Katy did! But his friends are a curious lot and they work their brains over-time to think of some scheme to make Kiddie tell.
"I'd have to see them before I made a choice," Freddie Firefly told him in a more hopeful tone. So Chirpy ordered Kiddie Katydid and Moses and Mehitable to produce their banners, which they had left leaning against the wall. They brought them forth fearfully, each hoping that his or hers wasn't going to be taken away and handed over to Freddie Firefly to carry in the procession.
The stolid fellow looked around in the blankest surprise. "Tune?" "No, groaning, wheezing! You spew it out all day long! What do you think you are? A tree frog, a locust, a katydid? Doesn't your mouth get tired? Does that hideous tinkle go through your hollow head all day long?" The Englishman's long face was a dusky red.
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