The Cricket Chronicles

 

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In the Beginning……

August 18, 2014:

I almost committed murder once. I knew exactly how I was going to do it too. It started where I’m searching up, down, behind, and inside everywhere in the cramped quarters of my room. Searching for that annoying noise inside my closet. Normally this soft, faint chirp wouldn’t set me off end so much but after every effort to silence the noise nonviolently with giant ear plugs however this was no normal end to a normal day. After a long day of battle with the biggest bearish ignorant dunce of a man as required for a group project I was in no mood to listen to the symbol of awkward silence, the cricket. I wanted to persecute this little cricket to the fullest extent of the law; I no longer cared he was the reality star of the famous Disney’s Jiminy Cricket. The room is a pitch black due to my lack of planning when picking a wall color which felt like the same color consuming my heart when thinking about squashing the little annoyance with my fluffy zebra slipper. After find this little member of the order Orthoptera, and the suborder Ensifera” (Alexander, 2009, p.1) I no longer had the gumption to crush his crunchy jumping hind legs, two pairs of wings (rarely one) or none, either three or four tarsal segments, and thread-like antennae that are longer than the body” (Alexander, 2009, p.1). I was just tired, tired of feeling like I was just repeating the same chirp chirp all day long to this stupid group mate, tired of the same chirp chirp to myself about how much crap I need to complete tomorrow to prevent downward mobility in my economic future. I was so tired of listening to the same chirps of myself that I tuned out the relaxing noise of nature in my closet.

 

Carlton Cricket  Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Carlton Cricket
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Carlton Cricket  Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Carlton Cricket
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

“How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world…Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we walk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives. Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them” (Abram, 2010).

 

Similar to the idea of David Abram in Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, I realized I was not longer engaging in life or the nature around me, even when it was in my own bedroom. I sat on my bed tired and kinda of depressed really, and listened to the now cautious chirps of my new found neighbor. This stress induced possible premeditated murder was in the beginning of my cricket chronicle.

People have a tendency to over simplify the history of other living beings which is probably due to our constant desire to avoid wearing nature’s dunce hat or the cone of shame. On example of this oversimplification is with the confusion between the Mormon Katydid as a cricket and the Tree cicada as a tree cricket is because of the shared order and the addition shared family of Gryllidae. “Some Ensifera have been called crickets mainly because they resemble Gryllidae, lack established common names, or otherwise have obscure family connections” (Alexander, 2009, p.1). Humans just named the Mormon Katydid a Mormon cricket because of them being cousins in a sense by sharing an order. If this was going to be the pattern even the stick bug could technically be called a stick cricket because of sharing the Orthoptera order or say crickets turned around and did this association with the living beings of humans. In their eyes we’d all look like dysfunctional cluster of cousins marrying cousins. Additionally “crickets are different because they all have long thread-like antennae, two slender tactual abdominal cerci, three tarsal segments, and some bulbous sensory setae basally on the insides of the cerci. No other ‘cousin’ shares all these features” (Alexander, 2009, p.1). Translated into English, crickets have long skinny antennas, the split fork looking tail on their rear end, three ankle pieces, and sensors on their tail that act like whiskers on a cat. Mormon Katydid’s difference is they don’t have the ability to fly like crickets. Cicadas have a higher frequency song than crickets making them easier to pick out too. Cricket chirps are at a low enough frequency where we can actually hear it as a type of melody, whereas Katydids and Cicadas are too high making their song sound like garbled trash music much like the garbled trash logic that came out of my co-workers mouth.

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How Crickets Sing:

October 19,2014:

Today was the day that I experienced the discrimination that humans apply on ‘animals’ first hand. I work in an independent senior living apartment complex as an activities assistant. However the place of my experience was in the break room. I had just grabbed my brunch and was about to clock out to eat when I noticed the other co-worker in the room was watching the Animal Channel. The episode was on elephant seals. The episode was at the part when the production crew acts like a bunch of pervs by recording the intercourse between two animals. My fellow co-worker was pretty interested in the episode to where I felt it was reasonable to poke fun at him. I mockingly asked him, “Bob, why are you so intently watching these elephant seals have sex?? That’s their personal life”. He stated back “ Oh no no no. They are just fighting they are not mating. It is called mating because they are animals. Animals can’t have sex because that is for pleasure only humans can do this. No no no no these animals are mating”. I held my tongue on the argument building pressure inside me about how is he dehumanizing these living beings with his own ego, which was similar to the topic of discussion in one of the previous humanities classes. The only true difference between other living organisms like these elephant seals and crickets to humans is humans have ego. We feel the need to make ourselves feel superior even when the topic is something as primal based as sex. Upon this experience I have edited every word used such as person, animal or insect to living being in order to demonstrate how connected we truly are to the environment. This is also to avoid encouraging humans inflated ego when it comes to crickets or any other living being. This change in word choice could find a way into Elizabeth Haupt’s definition of new nature.

“ In the past, nature has been romanticized into an untouched place beyond human civilization” (Haupt, 2013, p.13). New nature is scientifically significant because the term describes how nature has developed in order to mesh with human urban development. New nature is unlike the old scientific and societal view of nature, where nature has to be land that is untouched by human development. This old version of nature is no longer existence because humans have practically damaged or at the very least touched majority of ‘nature’. Culturally new nature is significantly due to the terms ability to put nature in a new perspective for humans by promoting awareness of the ‘new nature’ that dwells in our own backyards and urban developments. An addition to empathize about new nature could be the inclusion of human as an urban species in hopes to change the perspective of human superiority to where humans realize that we are just animals with an ego problem nothing more. In addition to our ego problem we also are downsized by the cricket in the way that not all of our male population can sing a mate into bed. In most cases among humans males would be forever alone even for humming a tone deaf tune which is another reason the cricket is equal to or better than humans.

A crickets chirping can either be a great annoyance when trying to focus or a relaxing background noise that is familiar to a warm summer’s night. Often the chirping song that crickets perform “lots of people think are crickets just rubbing their legs together, but that’s not so. Male crickets chirp by rubbing a ridge on one wing against a sort of file-like thing on the other wing”, (Thompson, 2008). This can be compared to plucking your finger on the teeth of a comb. The variation of the teeth sizes changes the pitch of the combs noise. House crickets happen to have a very high pitch chirping song like that of teasing comb.

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These are the common cricket in local parks of Chandler, Arizona. Majority of crickets tend to play their song sweet summer melody after a rain storm,(Thompson, 2008). However this feels like a lie due to on the walks with my mother these crickets are always chirping and guess what it didn’t rain. Maybe these park crickets are confusing the irrigation and sprinkler systems as rain because they have never seen real rain. The house cricket is that a neighbor that can actually serenade a person to sleep without that unbearable awkward tension. On the other hand if the house cricket or any cricket’s chirping is more of an annoyance than a pleasure there is a more reasonable use that the chirping can be used for. There is an actual simple formula that can be used to estimate the temperature by counting a cricket’s chirps. First start timing one minute, at the start of the minute count how many times the cricket chirps then take the sum and add forty. This will give an estimate of what the surrounding temperature is within a few degrees,(Thompson, 2008). Why They Sing: The chirping that crickets perform has two main functions in the life of crickets: attracting a female and challenging nearby males. The difference between the two songs can be determined by rate and the pattern of the pulses along with the pitch (Alexander, 2009, p.1). Each different family or species of crickets has their very own song so finding a mate belonging to their species is easier kind of like having E-Harmony built right into your leg. Female crickets pick up on the male crickets’ serenade through ears on their front legs (The University of Arizona ,1997). “With respect to genetic background, nerve and muscle physiology, and behavioral functions, the cricket acoustical system is almost certainly the most thoroughly understood of all animal communicative systems”(Alexander, 2009, p.1). So even though we try to smash them for making their songs, cricket song is the most understood by us humans versus an animal more accepted by society like a dog. In result of telling my mother this fact about crickets, along with many others, on our nightly walks I have slowly been changing her perspective on crickets and possibly other living beings with the exception of spiders, scorpions, and moths.

 

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Where They Originated From:

September 20th, 2014:

Every night it is a tradition for me to walk my mother around the neighborhood and surrounding park. My mother is technically not elderly nor does she appear it. She consciously keeps her grey curly roots in check with nice and easy honey blonde hair dye; the only ‘make-up’ she wears is her anti-aging Olay sun block lotion. We started our nightly walks as a way for us to both get healthier by losing some pounds four years ago, which we have both successfully accomplished to some extent. I have less of a Bartlett pear shape and she is now fitting into my old pre-walking routine pants. Typically we converse about normal topics such as plans for the week, how we are and such. However since my interest in cricket awareness has peaked since the start of this project the conversation on my end has usually been more like “Mom watch out for that cricket”, “Mom look at the cute tiny baby cricket”, or sadly ” Mom you killed him, poor little cricket”. In the case of the last one she would state, “ OH-NO!! I didn’t see him. He needs to be more carefully”. I find her claim of not seeing the crickets highly unlikely because she is a good foot closer to the ground then I am and I can still see the tiny creatures. That last comment she exclaims is the core of this post because tonight my mom confessed a murder committed in our house. My mother found a little cricket in our house and was trying to scoop him up as to send him outside. She does not like to kill little wild beings that make their way into our house by accident because we invaded their natural homes first. Instead she will grab her least favorable tuber ware and carefully capture them to be placed outside. However my mom has some shotty reflexes on occasion and this happened to be one of them. She misses the whole cricket and ended up performing a botched leg amputation on the little being. She now felt terrible to send him in to the wildness to lie down and die. She decided the only rational action was to murder this cricket with the toilet plunger. I argued my point that he would have survived by pointing out the one legged cricket that we just saw ALIVE on our nightly stroll. There was a mournful silence for the plunger cricket until we spotted another smaller cricket to photograph which led us to the conversation on if crickets are an invasive species to Arizona.

Spike the Cricket Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Spike the Cricket
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

The oldest documentation of the house cricket is the cricket being indigenous to Britain. House crickets were mentioned as “the most familiar British ‘being’…Living, as it does, in the immediate vicinity of the fire” (Bath, 1890,p.57). Since it can be inferred that the house cricket originated in Britain how did this little being make its way all over the world and in particular to Arizona. Richard Alexander states the various methods of how crickets spread; “ some colonizers fly, others tend to lay their eggs in wood, which is carried by water far and wide. Flightless soil ovipositors are poor colonizers, except via human transport”(Alexander, 2009,p.1). Crickets and humans have been neighbors since before the urban way of life and continued to be so due to us unconsciously carrying the little guys with us through our own travel. How to identify this little bug-eyed companion is by looking for these traits as followed. House crickets are a “light yellowish-brown or tan in color with darker bands and spots; they are about 3/4-inch long when mature”(Bradley & Gibson, 1998, p.1).

House crickets get their name for they are the only type of cricket that will live and bred indoors. They are kind of nosy urban neighbors for they possess the fondness to gather around foundations and doors outside and readily come inside through cracks or openings. If a house cricket does enter your house unwelcome don’t fret; they don’t cause any harm besides the occasionally gnawing at fabric and drywall. However, house crickets only start eating these belongings if the population is too massive to support their normal diet, which is unlikely to happen directly in a home. In general these peculiar little companions are talkative sweet little neighbors and don’t deserve the shunning from urban society because of the benefit they provide to us. In the beginning of researching the beneficial effects of the house cricket in our urban setting there was the common misunderstanding between the search engines and I about the word beneficial. The search engines perspective of beneficial was articles upon articles of what was the simplest method to getting rid of these ‘pests’. The outlook for putting the house cricket in a positive light as the good neighbor they are was pretty grim. Eventually after sorting through all the cricket hatred the neighborly deeds they perform was found. Crickets have their traditional role of following the food chain by keeping other living beings that are considered pests by humans in check. “Crickets are versatile living beings and are capable of feeding off a wide range of organisms. Largely vegetarian, they eat a great variety of young leaves, shoots, and stems but may also eat other living beings (adults and larvae), as well as a range of dead or decaying matter, including household wastes”,(Stone, 2004, p. 1099). In result of the house crickets fondness for the garbage left by humans they have gained a false advertisement as being diseased,(Stone, 2004). This is a negative rumor about the crickets helpful task of trying to sort of clean the urban environment back to semi-wildness where there is little to no waste. Crickets are like the natural urban garbage disposal, but humans usually won’t consider consuming their crunchy garbage disposal as substitute for traditional protein.


 

 

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Tiny Cricket, Big Protein:

Another benefit of the house cricket is they are a good substitute for protein when traditional methods of protein are not available. On a side note this does not by no means to inspire the audience to go outside an eat the neighborhood crickets. Due to the mobster approach of humans to gag the crickets out with poisonous chemicals, the cricket is most likely dosed in those and would result in some possible form of crunchy suicide. However throughout researching the house cricket multiple articles came up about the consumption of crickets as a source of protein for vegetarians. This thought is repulsive to most of the audience because no one wants the guilty conscience of eating Jiminy Cricket, however then he won’t be around to be the conscience anyway. Consuming crickets as well as a variety of other living beings is created into a festival at Purdue University in West Lafayette Indiana; this festival is called Bug Bowl,(Vargas, 1997). At the Bug Bowl there is all sorts of living being cuisine, most interestingly is a cricket cookie. There are two forms of the cricket cookie. One is like a cricket chip type which crunchy chunks of cricket in a type of sugar cookie. The second is the crickets are ground up in an undetectable manner like flour. The Bug Bowl also host contests based around the use of living beings; crickets are involved in such contests through the fierce competition of cricket spitting. This competition is like a sunflower seed spitting contest but instead with tasty little crickets flying far out of the competitors mouth. However this is the less useful compared to consuming them. “While not high on the list of American favorites, living beings are eaten in parts of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australia, and offer calcium, iron, proteins and fat”,(Vargas, 1997,p.1). Crickets as an alternative source for protein intake is more sustainable than the normal America source, beef. The amount of feed needed to produce just ten pounds of beef is one hundred pound whereas that one hundred pounds could produce four times that amount in crickets,(Reid, 2014). This simple increase in protein production will better suit the projected population for 2050 of nine billion people; conventional agricultural production would have to double in order to serve this population size,(Reid, 2014). Just think this wicked problem of not having enough protein to feed everyone could be solved with the measly little cricket. House crickets could aid in lessening and hopefully stopping forests being burned faster than the lumber can be processed in order to grow feed for cows. Glutinous cows that don’t even produce half of the protein the mighty cricket can. These tiny chirping crickets can satisfy flexible vegetarians and carnivores alike with their chip like crunch. With this comparison of cricket munching to chips I decided to try the strange little snack.

Candied Cricket Packaging  Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Candied Cricket Packaging
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Candied Crickets and Mealworms  Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Candied Crickets and Mealworms
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

October 15 , 2014:

I am not just some crazy loon that is telling how edible these little ‘persons’ are without overcoming the challenge myself. There is definitely this giant physiological barrier between us and crickets or their related beings. At the start of this project I was one of those girls who would shriek, squeal and produce all sorts of those embarrassing noises at the sight of harmless beings like the cricket. These shrieks would develop into a type of rage shouting to ‘kill it’ or ‘why is it in OUR house, kill it’. Throughout the project this reaction of disgust was the first to go or so I thought. Upon my endeavor of devouring a cricket in order to prevent being viewed as a hypocrite these embedded reactions resurfaced. This can be observed in the recorded documentation of my consuming of a chocolate covered cricket below.

 

http://youtu.be/dtgjzPSgR44

I forced myself to eat the little cricket candy at work so my co-worker could encourage me not to chicken out. Thankfully the chocolate covered cricket was quite edible. The texture was that of the candy Crunch a Brunch by Nestle except for a flaky texture after chewing for a bit. If you’re thinking about attempting this do not start to think about what you are doing towards the last chews. The flakiness will trick you to feel like there is a leg in your teeth which puts up the physiological barrier of supreme disgust in crickets. There was no distinct cricket-y flavor; the candy just tasted like mint and chocolate. After the first recorded cricket eating it was way easier to eat another one. This is most likely due to a relationship of conquering the unknown of eating crickets along with a change in perspective to make crickets equal with other ‘cuter’ forms of protein. (On a side note please keep in mind the use of the word living being or being is in substitution for the word insect due an attempt in destroying the human ego that states we are superior mentioned earlier.) This must have had a decent change on my fear towards crickets because a cricket was sitting on my knee cap while I was typing this section.

Chipper the Cricket Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Chipper the Cricket
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

I didn’t have any reaction of repulsion towards Chipper. (He lives with a cluster of ants near room 150 in the language and literature building.) Unfortunately Chipper leaped off my knee when I tried to snap a picture of our bond because he is a private person. He hides behind my back when I tried to capture him in a photo because unlike the famous cricket icons throughout literature and film he is shy.

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Roll out the Red Carpet….

The oldest and most famous two crickets in literature are as followed: the cricket from the cartoon based on Charles Dicken’s Cricket on the Hearth and the cricket from the lesson teaching oral story The Ant and the Cricket. The cartoon cricket from the movie version of the Cricket on the Hearth is a narrating cricket that tells and sympathizes with the story of a poor toymaker and his blind daughter in the clutches of an evil old miser. The film plays into the idea that a cricket’s song is the narration of life and what they see. Whereas the myth The Ant and the Cricket, also known as The Ant and the Grasshopper , teaches children the importance of diligence and prioritization. In the story of the ant and the cricket, the ant is the one to teach children and adults about the importance of being diligent and having a strong work ethic like the ant who collected grain all summer for the winter. Whereas the cricket does not understand the importance of prioritizing work over play. Instead of collecting grain all summer long like the ant, the cricket sang and play. Now in the winter the cricket has not grain and tries to bum some off the ant who scolds him for his foolishness. This is the opposite in Disney’s cricket icons who act as a symbol of good conscious or good luck.

Wilbur the Cricket  Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Wilbur the Cricket
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Disney films are starting to have what feels like an obsession with these cute little beings. Another noteworthy cricket is in Disney’s Mulan Cri-kee the cricket. Cri-kee follows an old Chinese tradition of bring the family good luck and wealth. Cri-kee holds true to his expectation from the culture and Mulan’s grandmother by keeping her safe in her perilous adventure. This relation to Chinese culture seeing the cricket as a symbol of good luck led to the activity of cricket fighting, which was not shown in the Disney film. Crickets in Chinese households that held cricket fighting treated their lucky pal like a pet dog by giving him tiny bowls of water , his favorite food, and training him for battle. Cricket fighting is similar to human boxing where we put two overly hormonally males into a small area and watch them kick the living crap out of each other. Both human and cricket boxing is for entertainment of other humans and usually benefits the victorious fighter with an impressed ‘hot’ mate. However, fighting for a hot mate was not on the mind of Cri-kee or on the mind of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio.

Disney’s production of Pinocchio is one of the most altered novels to make it suitable for their desired audience of children. This relates to the adorableness of crickets because Disney’s Jiminy cricket is the most known and loved cartoon cricket that society is introduced to as children. Jiminy cricket in Disney’s version is a helpful little cricket that leads Pinocchio through his obstacles to become a real boy. The version on Jiminy is similar to the original Adventure of Pinocchio in the way both crickets serve as Pinocchio’s conscience. However in the Adventure of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio shares urban society’s hatred for the lovable little cricket. In this version, Pinocchio becomes enraged at the Talking Cricket, A.K.A. Jiminy’s, advice and kills him. “These last words were too much for Pinocchio. He jumped up in a rage, snatched a mallet from the bench, and hurled it at the Cricket. Perhaps Pinocchio didn’t really mean to hit the Cricket, but unluckily the mallet caught him right on the head. The poor Cricket had scarcely breath enough to cry “cri-cri-cri!” before he was stretched out stiff and cold”(Collodi, 2012, p.15).

Wilbur the Cricket Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Wilbur the Cricket
Photo Credit: Emily Earl

Crickets deserve humans to change their perspective of them when even the most loved cricket is seen annoying by someone when the little cricket is just trying to be helpful. Pinocchio felt like most humans do when they can decide which living being dies by their hand; that the being is being an annoyance or inconvenience. Jiminy cricket in both versions of Pinocchio stood for the human conscience which can be seen as necessary in order for Pinocchio to become human. However, most humans find that annoying guilty conscience humming in their ear just something they should smash because they are human and he is just a cricket. He can’t possible have the brain power to conduct language based communication between other crickets or the ability to recognize himself in a mirror. These are only human abilities; he is easily disposable for the crime of ‘being annoying’. Humans tend to have this feeling about all living beings in nature sometimes even other humans. We continue to think that it is a part of being human to degrade other living beings in nature and to label our selves as superior.

We are “caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human” (Abram,1996, p.22).

However if this self given superiority gives humans the excuse to murder other living beings especially one viewed as annoying then my mother would have struck my dad out a long time ago.


List of Crickets in Humanities:

  • Charles Dicken’s The Cricket on the Hearth
  • The Ant and The Cricket
  • Disney’s Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio
  • Disney’s Cri-kee from Mulan

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Works Cited

Abram, D., (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Random House Inc.

 

Abram, D., (2010). Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. New York: Vintage Books.

 

Aesop’s Fables. (n.d.). The Ant and the Cricket. Perry Index.

Alexander, R., & Otte, D. (2009). Crickets. In R. T. Carde, & V. H. Resh, Encyclopedia of insects. San Diego: Academic Press.

Bancroft, T., & Cook, B. (Directors). (1998). Mulan [Motion Picture].

Barron, S. (Director). (1996). The Adventures of Pinocchio [Motion Picture].

Bath, H. W. (1890). The Young Collector’s Handbook of Ants, Bees, Dragon-flies, Earwigs, Crickets, and Flies. London: Swan Sonnenchein, Lowrey & Co.

Bradley, L., & Gibson, R. (1998). Cricket Management. Tucson: Publication AZ 1004.

Collodi, C. (1882). The Adventures of Pinocchio. Florence: Renaissance Classics.

Dickens, C. (1845). The Cricket on the Hearth. United Kingdom: Bradbury and Evans.

Ferguson, N., Hee, T., Jackson, W., Kinney, J., Luske, H., Roberts, B., & Sharpsteen, B. (Directors). (1940). Pinocchio [Motion Picture].

KQED. (Director). (2012). Edible Insects: Finger- Lickin’ Grub [Motion Picture].

Lefebvre, J. J. The Grasshopper. National Gallary of Victoria, Austrailia.

(2011). Mormon Cricket. In The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Mormon Cricket Legend. (1947). Western Folklore, 284.

Reid, M. (2014, March 25). Bugs on the Movie Menu: Victoria Documentary Director Examines the Growing World of Eating Insects. Times Colonist, p. C4.

Rubin, A. (2014, January). Crickets. The Midwest Quarterly, p. 110.

Stone, D. (2004). Crickets. In B. W. Lerner, & K. L. Lerner, The Gale Encyclopedia of Science (pp. 1099-1100). Detroit: Gale.

Thompson, C. (2008, May 28). Crickets Chirps Aren’t an Uncommon Sound, Even Here in Arizona . Arizona Republic .

Vargas, A. (1997). Snap! Crackle! Cricket Cookies Top Menu at Bug- Eating Festival.

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Works Cited

Aesop’s Fables. (n.d.). The Ant and the Cricket. Perry Index.

This source was used to demonstrate crickets in old myths to each about good work ethic having reward. Also the myth illustrates how light hearted and carefree crickets are in reality not just in folklore.

Alexander, R., & Otte, D. (2009). Crickets. In R. T. Carde, & V. H. Resh, Encyclopedia of insects. San Diego: Academic Press.

The source was used to find scientific information about the crickets body construction. The information found in the source was about house crickets’ class and order. Also further explained differences between cicadas, crickets, and grasshoppers.

Bancroft, T., & Cook, B. (Directors). (1998). Mulan [Motion Picture].

This source was used to reference crickets being a sign of good luck in Chinese culture following into modern day entertainment. Also the source was used to positively enforce the goodness of the cricket.

Barron, S. (Director). (1996). The Adventures of Pinocchio [Motion Picture].

This source was used to reference crickets being a sign of good conscientiousness in modern day entertainment. Also the source was used to positively enforce the goodness of the cricket.

 

Bath, H. W. (1890). The Young Collector’s Handbook of Ants, Bees, Dragon-flies, Earwigs, Crickets, and Flies. London: Swan Sonnenchein, Lowrey & Co.

This source was used as the earliest found documentation of house crickets in order to try and find their origin. These sources led to prediction of the cricket originally being from London, England then migrating on ships.

Bradley, L., & Gibson, R. (1998). Cricket Management. Tucson: Publication AZ 1004.

The source was used to describe the appearance of the house cricket and Mormon crickets. The source also supported the assumption that majority of society view crickets as a pest that has a parasitically relationship with humans.

Collodi, C. (1882). The Adventures of Pinocchio. Florence: Renaissance Classics.

This source demonstrates the negative reaction that humans have towards crickets which

is usually the instinct to kill them due to being viewed as annoying. Also demonstrates

a possible change in perspective about the cricket when compared to the Disney film version.

Dickens, C. (1845). The Cricket on the Hearth. United Kingdom: Bradbury and Evans.

The source was used for a humanities approach on a cricket’s chirp similar to the insect

narrating a story like in the novel. Also demonstrates the cricket as more of a person

with compassion than a stupid insect that needs to be killed.

Ferguson, N., Hee, T., Jackson, W., Kinney, J., Luske, H., Roberts, B., & Sharpsteen, B. (Directors). (1940). Pinocchio [Motion Picture].

The source is used to cement the lovable jiminy to the real insect that he is based off of. The lovability of Jiminy demonstrates a possible change in perspective about the cricket when compared to the original novel.

KQED. (Director). (2012). Edible Insects: Finger- Lickin’ Grub [Motion Picture].

The source was used as further evidence that insect eating is catching on in society.

The source goes into how crickets are not the only sustainable insect protein.

Lefebvre, J. J. The Grasshopper. National Gallary of Victoria, Austrailia.

The painting is used as reference to crickets being important in art too even though in this exact painting the insect is a grasshopper. The painting also shows how grasshoppers and crickets are interchanged by humans due to the painting being based off the myth of the Ant and the Cricket.

(2011). Mormon Cricket. In The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Houghton Mifflin Company.

The source was used to find scientific evidence that the Mormon cricket is technically not a cricket. Instead the Mormon cricket is actually a katydid.

Mormon Cricket Legend. (1947). Western Folklore, 284.

This source is to show crickets roles in religious stories as a kind of plague. The myth demonstrates humans’ annoyance and or fear with cricket even in the beginning.

Reid, M. (2014, March 25). Bugs on the Movie Menu: Victoria Documentary Director Examines the Growing World of Eating Insects. Times Colonist, p. C4.

The source was used as evidence of consuming insects progressively becoming a social norm in the United States. This was used to encourage the audience into trying insects due to their nutritional and sustainable aspects.

Rubin, A. (2014, January). Crickets. The Midwest Quarterly, p. 110.

The source was used as a poetic representation of cricket chirps. This can encourage a change in perspective on the chirp of crickets to soothing instead of annoying.

Stone, D. (2004). Crickets. In B. W. Lerner, & K. L. Lerner, The Gale Encyclopedia of Science (pp. 1099-1100). Detroit: Gale.

The source was used to find scientific information about the crickets’ body construction. The information found in the source was about house crickets’ class and order. Also the source further explained differences between cicadas, crickets, and grasshoppers.

Thompson, C. (2008, May 28). Crickets Chirps Aren’t an Uncommon Sound, Even Here in Arizona . Arizona Republic .

The source was used to demonstrate how the sounds of cricket chirps actually are useful for humans. Also the sound can be comforting in a time of great stress due to its familiarity.

Vargas, A. (1997). Snap! Crackle! Cricket Cookies Top Menu at Bug- Eating Festival.

The source was used as evidence of consuming insects progressively becoming a social norm in the United States . This was used to encourage the audience into trying insects due to their nutritional and sustainable aspects.

 

 

 

 

 

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