Cricket-cricket-cricket! The sound of summer fills the house: cricket-cricket-cricket! The lights go out and the cricketing starts. I like the sound; my wife curses the lizards for their poor hunting skills and screams for silence.

It is just one of the side-effects of keeping reptiles. Cricket-cricket-cricket! The crickets are food: little hopping meals that occasionally survive the slaughter that defines the first few seconds they hit the cage. A flash of lizard, snapping jaws and the juicy crunch of exoskeleton. A few inevitably escape and hide away in the grapewood or behind a waterdish, only to venture forth after lights out to sing their happy little cricket song. At night, the crickets rule (in most cages, at least. For the unfortunate few in the nocturnal tanks it is a short reign).

Cricket-cricket-cricket! They sing. Roughly translated, it means “Hey were alive! Let’s meet and mate and share some sweet cricket love!” Perhaps I give them ore credit than is due: More likely it is “Sex-sex-sex!” that they sing. (whatever the words, it is a happy sound. At night they forage and feed and do not seem to notice the hungry behemoths sleeping nearby. It is time to sing!

With the furnace cranked up and crickets cricketing, it is easy to imagine a pleasant summer night, camping outdoors. A few sharp-edged toys under the sheets (thanks, boy-child) to simulate rocks and the scent of the Christmas tree, and the illusion is almost complete. All I need to complete the illusion is to make a blanket tent over the bed, grab a flashlight and release a jar of mosquitoes.

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