Cricket chirping in the house
A cricket chirping in the house speeds up on warm nights and slows on cool ones, so the sound can make you ask what sets your own pace. Maryland and Virginia lore held it unlucky to harm one.
What it may mean
A cricket is a living thermometer. Because it takes its body heat from the air, it chirps quickly on a warm night and slowly on a cool one, so steadily that counting the chirps gives a fair estimate of the temperature. The cricket does not decide its tempo; the weather sets it. The chirp from behind the bookcase raises the same question about your own tempo: what speeds you up (a deadline, a crowded room, too much coffee), what slows you down, and whether you choose either one. Some weeks you are running hot without noticing. Old Irish lore treated crickets as ancient beings worth listening to, and in Maryland harming one was thought unlucky; you do not need either belief to learn something from the rhythm.
Depending on how you saw it
Counting the chirps outdoors
Count a cricket's chirps for 14 seconds and add 40, and you will often come close to the temperature in Fahrenheit; the snowy tree cricket gives the best results. A little arithmetic turns noise into information. What everyday clue in your days could tell you more if you stopped to measure it?
Silence when you come close
Crickets stop the moment they feel footsteps, then start again once the room is still, so a cricket indoors can be maddening to find. Not every sound in the house needs to be tracked down and fixed. Which small noise in your life could you simply let be part of the background?
Crickets moving indoors as nights cool
In early fall, field and house crickets slip in under doors and through basement windows looking for warmth. Their arrival marks the turn of the season more reliably than the calendar. What small sign tells you that your own season is turning?
The quiet after the first frost
After a hard frost, the outdoor chorus that filled every summer night simply stops. Most of us only notice the sound once it is gone. Is there something steady around you that you have stopped hearing, and would miss if it went silent?
Why it happens in nature
Only male crickets chirp. They rub a scraper on one wing across a row of ridges on the other, and females hear the call through small ears on their front legs. Because crickets are cold-blooded, they chirp faster in warm air and slower in cool air, and many kinds move into houses, garages and basements when the nights turn cold.
What folk beliefs say
Ireland
Among the Irish, crickets were believed to be enchanted beings hundreds of years old, whose talk, if anyone could understand it, would tell the whole history of the world.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 606. View the page
Maryland and Virginia
In Maryland and Virginia, crickets were called "old folks," and it was unlucky to destroy one. The 1903 collection suggests the name came from the hearth, where crickets lived and where the old people of the house used to sit.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 606. View the page
To reflect on
What has been setting your pace lately, and is it something you chose?