My Friend Fred—Part 3 (and final)

I did finally get some helpful guidance on academic Websites. Fred is apparently a field cricket, rather than a house cricket. (Pardon me while I lay down some dry scientific cricket trivia here—but I can’t resist.) House crickets are brown and smaller than their black field cousins. Fred was very black. Field crickets come in at least two flavors: Gryllus veletis and Gryllus pennsylvanicus. Which one was Fred? Again I was able to hone in on Fred’s family tree, since G. veletis overwinters as a mid-sized juvenile nymph and matures in the spring. (G. pennsylvanicus overwinters as an egg, and Fred ain’t no egg.) Fred’s type like to overwinter in “moist, firm soil.” I guess that’s what he was seeking when he emerged from under the stereo. He was looking up at me and inquiring if I’d seen any moldy dirt lately—he’d found only dry dust balls under the stereo.

Here’s the neat exoskeleton part: Nymphs, according to the Ohio State University website, “… resemble adults, except are smaller and wingless, molt eight to nine times [!] and reach adulthood in about 90 days.” Ohio State gave me another sign to check out: at each molt, a cricket’s poop gets larger. I could measure the size of Fred’s poop and compare it to pre-molt! This was getting fun.

I learned even more about Fred’s habits at related sites. Crickets, one Website explained, “… eat plants, dead insects, seeds, leather, paper, and old cloth (especially if the cloth is stained by food or perspiration). They are particularly fond of wool and silk.” Hey, I could begin to vary Fred’s diet! I immediately tore off the corner of a soiled paper napkin I’d been using and dropped it in as a treat. Several days later Fred had not touched it. I guess the grass was greener.

Another Website said that crickets’ powerful legs allow them to leap as high as three feet. Hmmm… maybe Fred had grasped the properties of his glass-walled home but concluded it also had a glass roof. If he tried such a great leap, he might just hurt himself, banging up against his very own glass ceiling.

Another site said that cricket legs are so strong that cricket fighting was an ancient and popular form of entertainment in China. A prospective champion cricket owner would starve his tiny gladiator for several days before tossing him into the ring, to face another equally hungry and mean fighter. I assured Fred that I was horrified at such barbarity.

Yet another Website described how spiders have real respect for those fierce cricket legs. If a cricket happens to get caught in a spider web, “… the spider takes great care to wrap webbing around it before moving in for the paralyzing bite. If the spider gets impatient, a swift kick from those powerful jumping legs could gravely wound the spider.” Aha! That’s why the spider left the fish bowl after a few days! It understood that Fred could kick its butt. I like to think that I helped Fred resist the potential spider assaults by providing him a cozy home that had allowed him to store up enough sleep that he could stay awake nights—one eye cocked in the spider’s direction, just waiting for a threatening move. He did seem to sleep more, after the spider left.

Only male crickets chirp, and they do so by rubbing one serrated-edged wing against the other—ever faster as the temperature rises. So how do I know that Fred is a male, when he had exercised his right to remain silent? Because one of the Websites showed that the female had a long ovipositor (the tube that deposits her eggs) protruding from her hind end. Fred had just a cute, round little butt… no ovipositor. Before determining my cricket friend’s gender, I had not named it. When “it” became “Fred”, the bond deepened.

Finally, one fascinating piece of information I gathered from one Website is that crickets spend their days out of sight—under a stone or in a shallow burrow. That information told me that maybe Fred was a little uncomfortable being exposed all day long in a fish bowl (sort of a “fish bowl exposure,” one could say), so I built him a three-walled house with tiny roof from an old matchbox; a wee cricket-port. Five minutes after I placed it in the corner of his bowl, Fred had retreated inside.

When spring’s warmth returned I carried Fred’s fishbowl outside and tipped it over. I stood back as he finally discovered that his glass ceiling was, in fact, nonexistent. (Maybe he knew that, and simply preferred to be fed regularly?) Slowly he edged towards the opening, jumped daintily onto the greening grass, and scurried under cover. He didn’t pause to wave an antenna or even to bow in my direction, but I waved him on, hoping that he would now be strong enough to mate and carry on his family tradition.