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A Cricket Cacophony
Opening the windows after a thunderstorm
What is it about a thunderstorm that makes you want to stop whatever you are doing and go to a window or out onto the porch and just stand there and watch the storm?
Is it the energy? The electricity crackling in the air? The disruption of regular programming? The smell? The drop in temperature? The change in air pressure? The forcefulness of life impinging on your reality?
Since three o’clock this afternoon we have had three thunderstorms so far today and a fourth is bearing down on us here on the plains. I find thunderstorms profoundly exhilarating. Three successive thunderstorms are almost like multiple orgasms.
All that water somehow manages to ignite my fire. I know that does not make sense but it does.
Have you ever noticed how between successive thunderstorms the crickets will come out en masse and scream their hind legs off? Cricket music never seems to be as loud as just after a thunderstorm. This seems so true but is it really just the contrast between cricket music and cricket silence that seems to heighten the sound? Have you ever noticed that during a thunderstorm the one sound you absolutely will not hear is crickets?
And where do crickets go when rain is falling in bucket-loads? Is the intensity of…
