Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
But he has one peculiar habit: he won't grab you unless you're moving through the air. He always takes his food on the wing." Chirpy thanked his friend Kiddie Katydid for this valuable bit of news. And he said he'd be sure to remember it. "Well," Kiddie Katydid observed, "if you forget it when you meet Mr. Nighthawk you'll forget it only once. For he'll grab you quick as a flash."
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.
The only sounds he heard seemed a part of nature's silence, the tinkle of cowbells, the slumberous monotone of water as it fell over the dam, the grating notes of a katydid, rendered hoarse by recent cool nights, in a shady ravine near by, and a black cricket chirping at the edge of the rock on which he sat these were all.
At the hour of sunset the cicada winds his rattle most joyously, subsiding into silence as darkness comes and making way for the katydid. The screechy orchestra is a poor substitute for the grand birds' concerts of June and July. For the birds, August is a month of silence. Except for an occasional solo, nearly all the birds are silent, moulting and moping in the thickets.
Late in July it began with the short rasps and screeches of tiny hoppers flitting in the grass; the katydid began to tune up on the evening of July 29. Then the long-legged conductor waved his baton and the orchestra was off. It started moderato, but quickly increased to an allegro, and sometimes it is almost presto.
The wild rose will bend over her grave the brook will murmur low at her cold feet the rabbit will nip the tender grass by her tombstone at night-fall the katydid will chirp over her, and the whippor-will will sing in vain. William will forget her! Poor La-u-na!" "No La-u-na! no! Thou shalt go with me and be my bride, or else I will remain with thee!
Have you seen Mrs. Thumbkins? She has not been at home all day and I can not find her!" cried Thumbkins. "Yes, I saw her early this morning going down the path with her acorn basket," said Granpa Tobackyworm as he blew a few rings of smoke in the air. "Perhaps she has gone to the Katydid grocery store to buy something," Granpa Tobackyworm added as he bounced up and down on his blade of grass.
The Katydid was a wonderful affair of silver and gold which Dick had constructed on ideas entirely his own. It went up slowly but surely and proved to be as good a kite as the majority. A number of girls living in the neighborhood, bad heard of the kite-flying contests, and now they came up, Dora Stanhope with the rest, accompanied by her two cousins, Grace and Nellie Laning.
The more he thought about Mr. Nighthawk the more he wanted to meet him. "If you ever see Mr. Nighthawk again I wish you'd tell him I want to talk with him," Chirpy said. "I'll do so," Kiddie Katydid promised. "And now let me give you a bit of advice. When you meet Mr. Nighthawk, keep perfectly still. He's a hungry fellow, always on the look-out for somebody to eat.
In my simplicity I believed it, and it was not until I caught, the next season, a katydid while it was in the act of singing, that I discovered that the music among the hazel bushes was not made by the wild geese."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking