Sometimes when digging the garden soil preparing for the next crop of veggies
you turn over a clod to see a brown prehistoric style insect about 15 cms 
long scurry away and quickly bury itself again.

I have never been able to photograph one of these beautiful characters,
however I have managed to photograph a distant relative, the elusive Preying
Mantis.

The mystery of the insect world always fascinates me - what was he doing.
There was no apparent damage and so onwards I go, preparing and planting my
winter cabbages.
The weather had been very dry and lots of plants were starting to suffer.
I never sighted the Cricket again, thinking he may have perished. I thought
it strange how he got called a cricket. He didn't look like a bat nor like 
a ball or cricket stumps, somethings are lost in the transit of time and one
can only ponder.
Then In Autumn when the rains broke late in the afternoon I heard a high
pitched chorus of noise coming from ever corner of the veggie garden and also
from the lawn and flower patches. After listening for some time it began to
make sense; it was a symphony of music coming from under the ground. These
invisible crickets being in great numbers were giving thanks for the rain.

The next morning on inspecting the still soft soil, evidence showed the 
crickets had tunnelled just under the surface making patterns going this way
and that way, keeping out of sight searching for the mysteries of the insect
world.
This chorus of music went on day and night for days, the high pitch when
standing between the contestants was hard to endure, however if you stomped
on the ground those closest stopped only to start again when you moved on.
As the season progresses crickets seem too hard to find and the music stops.
With the large number in the garden in Autumn one could be excused for 
expecting to see many crickets when tending the various crops but rarely is
it so.
People are so busy in their walks of life they miss the mysteries of the
other world.
Remember that spiders had the first Web pages.

 Daryl Morrow
0418 376 863