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"There may be little food on the cold, snowy days that are coming. We shall need the sugar more then than we do now. Have you forgotten the story of the ant and the katydid?" "Tell it again. Tell it now before we get home, Mother." "I think there is time, as it is a short story," said Good Bird.
The summer is passing, but not in sadness. Some of the greatest of its glories are reserved for these last days. Now the cicada, forgetting to give his winding salute at sundown, has almost dropped out of the insect orchestra and the katydid, too, is heard less often. The rest of the screeching musicians vary the volume and the speed of their music in approximate ratio to the temperature.
The fireflies on the Virginia hills were blinking in the dark places beneath the trees and a katydid was singing in the rosebush beside the portico at Arlington. The stars began to twinkle in the serene sky. The lights of Washington flickered across the river. The Capitol building gleamed, argus-eyed on the hill.
"Jus' a hole in the groun'," he said, half to himself; "that's whut we're all comm' to! 'Pears like we mought help one 'nother to keep out'n hit, 'stid o' holpin' 'em in." Brown shadows were interlacing out in the mill-pond, where old Gabe's eyes were intent. A current of cool air had started down the creek to the river. A katydid began to chant. Twilight was coming, and the miller rose.
Such are crickets and grasshoppers, which fiddle and rasp their roughened hind legs against their wings. Some butterflies have the power of making a sharp crackling sound by means of hooks on the wings. The katydid, so annoying to some in its persistent ditty, so full of reminiscences to others of us, is a large, green, fiddling grasshopper.
I am going to tell you of a strange happening, that you may see any hot day in August. And this is how it came about. At that meeting in the woods when the Cicada and the Katydid undertook to be musicians, while the birds were on strike, there was one strong insect who gave off an angry "Bizz, Bizz" that sounded like "Scab, Scab."
And we know too that dogs can understand what many of their master's words signify, as when a shepherd gives directions to his collie. We could even go further down in the scale and find in the shrill chirping of the katydid at the mating season a still more elementary combination of significant instinctive sound elements.
The dusk had deepened to darkness. The woods were full of gloom. A timorous star palpitated in the sky. In the sudden stillness when the bark-mill ceased its whir, the mountain torrent hard by lifted a mystic chant. The drone of the katydid vibrated in the laurel, and the shrill-voiced cricket chirped.
Her food consists of leaves, but to lay the eggs in such a situation would be a fatal process, because the leaf will drop off before the eggs hatch. Accordingly, the katydid lays its shield-shaped eggs in a double row near the end of a young twig. Next year when the weather is sufficiently warm to hatch katydids, it is also warm enough to force the buds on the end of the twigs.
He had thought it was thunder that he had just heard. But it was Mr. Nighthawk, making that odd, booming sound of his. It was ever so much louder than Chirpy had supposed it could be. He had never heard it so near before. For a moment Chirpy thought that perhaps Kiddie Katydid didn't know what he was talking about. But no! There was Mr. Nighthawk's well-known call, Peent! Peent!
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