Nature-notes and impressions : in prose and verse / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]

The curious, clay-colored molecricket, with its little paw-like claws pushing its stealthy way through the damp creek clay and sand, frequently fools me with its shrill, high cry, persistent, piercing, coming, seemingly, from no discoverable where. One would imagine that the earth through which it tunnels its narrow gallery would smother, or, at least, muffle the sound, but it does not. Shrill and distinct it rises in the summer silence, louder even than the twilight sound of its brother, the climbing cricket, whose wings vibrate pensively, plaintively,

on the concealing side of a sassafras or green-brier leaf.