I have been helping Mary Alice replant perennials. This year, with all of the weeds due to the many rainy days, she has decided to eliminate one garden. However, several lemon lilly plants, peony plant, butterfly bush and other flowers needed to be dug up, moved and planted somewhere else.

This is nothing new because she has always moved plants around our yard like people move furniture in their homes.

While digging, I noticed several insects jumping out of the way. Although appearing to be crickets, they were quite tiny, and I was not sure what they were. When I went into the house I looked up information on the cricket and found that young crickets go through 8-10 molts. This takes over two months, with the last molt occurring in late summer.

“You don’t need tickets

To listen to crickets.

They chirp and cheep for free.

They fiddle and sing

By rubbing each wing,

And never will charge you a fee.” — author unknown

By the end of summer, the male crickets’ wings will grow, and once this occurs, we will hear the singing of the male crickets. The singing begins when a male cricket establishes his territory and chases other males away. The males begin singing to summon the females. At first, the males produce a standard tone, which is the triple chirp familiar to all of us. When the time for mating arrives the courtship song is a continuous trill.

The English language has two completely unrelated words for cricket. One is the name for a small grasshopper-like insect that comes from the old French word criquer, meaning click or creak and no doubt comes from the sound the cricket makes.

The other cricket is a game that is thought to come from another old French word croquet, which means stick. Another possible explanation is that it comes from the Flemish word krick-stol, which is a long, low stool with a shape reminiscent of the early types of wickets.

A cricket is a medium-sized jumping insect, with long thread-like antennas. There are many types of crickets: field and mole crickets that live on the ground and others, such as tree crickets that live in bushes and trees.

The house cricket is not common in the United States, however the field cricket enters homes and is often called a house cricket.

Only the male cricket sings. The chirping, which is a fiddling rather than a singing, is produced by scraping a file on the underside of the wing against a file on the upper side of the opposing organ.

Crickets sing an impressive variety of songs, each with its own purpose. A male’s calling song invites receptive females to come closer and get to know him. Then the female is serenaded with a courtship song as he tries to convince her that he is the best among her suitors. If the female accepts him as a mate, the male could sing a song to announce their partnership.

Male crickets also sing rivalry songs to defend their territories from competitors. Each cricket species produces its own signature call, with a unique volume and pitch. As many as three different songs could be sung to the female before mating takes place.

A female cricket can be identified by the long ovipositor at the end of her abdomen. Don’t be confused by the two sharp spines or tails projecting from the abdomen because both the male and female have these. Male crickets are typically larger and have wings that extend past their abdomens. They also produce the loud chirping sound that is so often associated with crickets.

Female crickets, on the other hand, are smaller and have shorter wings that do not extend past their abdomens. Of course, if the cricket is singing, it is a male since the female does not sing.

In late summer, the female thrusts this ovipositor into the ground, where she deposits her eggs. When the young crickets emerge from their eggs in the spring, they resemble their parents except they have no wings.

In the wild, field crickets dig and live in burrows in the ground or hide under stones, boards and leaf litter. Crickets eat grass, grains, fruit and dead animals. At times, they become cannibals and eat each other.

Supposedly we can come close to Fahrenheit temperature by counting the number of a cricket’s chirps in a fourteen-second period and then adding forty. This mathematical equation was published by Amos Dolbear and was known as Dolbear’s Law. As a rule, crickets do not chirp when the temperatures drop below fifty-five degrees or rise above one-hundred degrees.

It has been said that a cricket on the fireplace hearth is an omen of good luck. However, crickets will sometimes eat rugs, upholstered furniture and clothing.

Have you ever tried to find a chirping cricket? If you walk in the direction of the cricket’s song, the singing stops. Both sexes have ears located on their front legs just below the knees. Since the cricket has ears on its legs, it can detect the slightest vibration created by your footsteps. The best way for a cricket to avoid predation is to remain quiet.

Some crickets such as the mole cricket live in a single hole in the ground. If a cricket returns to its home and finds another cricket, a fight of biting ensues. Many times, the fight ends in death for one of the crickets, with the winner eating the loser.

It’s hard to believe that this violent insect fighter produces the cheerful chirping sounds that we enjoy on a fall evening.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.