The
Cricket Ranch
My Ant Farm was just
the beginning. I live in an apartment that doesn't allow "pets" (cats,
dogs, pot bellied pigs, etc.) but I like having little creatures share
my space. The super raised her eyebrow the first time she saw them, but
they didn't get evicted. When my Ant Farm was waiting for new ants and the completion of the Formicarium, I got an idea.
Add some different 'bugs'!
First thing
that came to me was to catch the last pesky indoor housefly of the season.
I have always been untroubled by swatting flies if they annoy me. (I'm
not a follower of Hinduism, a vegetarian, or bothered by hunting, leather
or fur.) I am kind of superstitious and think it is bad luck to off the
last fly in the house in fall. So I waited for just one to be left, caught
him and made a cage out of a panty-hose container. You can see it in the
picture at the top of the page - it has a little cocktail umbrella for
shade. The fly was named 'Little Bob' and he seemed happy enough until
he died. I still have him in the hope that he will revive in spring like
the ones that lay on the window sill all winter often seem to do. We'll
see. (Its almost May now, and still no signs of life. How do those flies that sleep all winter do it?)
Then,
my friend Ray caught a cricket in
his basement for me. I gave him a cheap picture frame and he drilled some
air holes in it. (Ray, not the cricket) Next he installed a feeding &
watering hole, complete with cork. I added some toys, scenery and
a sea-shell water dish. I call the basic idea a Cricket Ranch
and it looks like this:
Click to see a larger image
The
cricket was named Tom and seemed happy in his cabin right up until he died.
He ate crumbs and bits of lettuce and he ate almost all of a piece of
plastic pine tree. I worried that this might make him sick; maybe it did.  The new
crickets get dog food and bits of lettuce and anything else I can think of. They go
through plenty of water - even take little baths. They have some marbles
to play with and a little tp tube to hide in. And this year I added a little matchbox of real dirt, which they seem to like. They seem nice and healthy
but I wonder if they doesn't need a space to hop. Someone said they only
hop when trying to escape danger, otherwise they just walk. Do you know?
Since Tom passed away unexpectedly, the Cricket Ranch is populated by two new crickets named 98 and 99. I think I have learned a bit from all the helpful folks who have sent in hints and suggestions. Like to feed them a little dry dog food instead of expecting them to be vegetarians.
Someone pointed out that the people at Bell Labs have this amazing Text-to-Speech Synthesis program.
Their Demonstration Page has a translator for Gnat language. I figured why couldn't they do this amazing science for crickets. Well here it is! You type in words and it comes out in cricket as a .wav file. Try it!
Text-to-Cricket Synthesizer
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