Here in Georgia, I sit outside at night, on my deck, with the roar and rattle of crickets in the trees. Mostly snowy tree crickets and an occasional katydid. There’s an occasional cicada added to the mix. Along with an insistent green tree frog. And I wonder – what’s it like, tonight, in south Texas?
I am still adjusting to hearing aids. It was time – I was trying to read lips – and once I got hearing aids, I don’t know how I’d managed to live without them. I know some of my high school friends have been using them for some time. Why did I wait so long?
For me, it’s like hearing things new, all over again. In the morning it’s the birds, and I’ve got to re-learn their songs. (It’s special when I hear that neighborhood cuckoo. Dad always called it a “rain crow.”). And then sundown and the evening cacophony begins.
How about down there, in south Texas? What do you hear tonight? Does the cicada still call? The one that starts off click-click-click and then accelerates to a buzz? Do the field crickets still chirp away? Do the coyotes still bay at the moon? Out at Baffin Bay, do those tender little waves still splash over-so-gently against the beach, maybe in the moonlight? Do the salt marsh mosquitoes still have that terrifying whine, daring you to leave the safety of the beach? (Does the dreaded tarantula still stalk its prey in the dusk?).
(When I was little, we were deathly afraid of tarantulas. They’re fearsome looking but harmless. The males do most of the wandering; you’d see them trying to cross roads. Looking for lady spiders, no doubt.).
Our Georgia fauna is catching up with you Texans. We have armadillos here now, and coyotes of course. And a trap-door spider that could rival the Texas Tarantulas. We don’t have Javelinas. Not yet, anyway. However, We do have Hogzilla running loose in the swamp!
Dac
7/30/2008
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