The First Cold Night...

At 11:30 last night I walked the dog. It was a different experience. I stood with the leash in my hand on our back deck, watching my breath form mist in the air around me as the dog hunted the grass for a spot to mark and fantasized about what might be hiding in the grass just beyond its field of vision - rabbits and groundhogs and possums and other good things to chase. As I dragged Macy back up the steps to the house I checked the thermometer: 39F degrees.

It was about 6:30 this morning when Macy woke me to take her back out to the grass. It was 34F at that early hour. We evidently just escaped frost...

The change is remarkable. Friday night (and for weeks past now) a symphony of bugs performed nightly in my yard and in the surrounding brush and forest. Members of the family Tettigoniidae, commonly called "katydids," counted back and forth to each other it seemed to me - though they are more usually considered to be arguing about the actions of a girl named Katy (Katy did, Katy didn't, etc.). Over them, at a slightly higher pitch and with less vigor, the crickets struggle to be heard. Some other insect made a still higher pitched and more continuous hum. The frogs in my creek sang bass. The noise was not overwhelming, but it was considerable. In Spring and early Summer individual members of the symphony arrive in stages. While owls and other night bird struggle to be heard at all above the din in early August, in mid-Winter the night is almost completely silent here in my corner of Central Appalachia.

Tonight it is 50F outside and the crickets are still alive. Spring's first arrivals stay the longest.

This has been among the hottest summers on record. The Bluefield area has had more 90F-degree days than since records began being kept. How much heat will return remains to be seen. I enjoy the symphony as it arrives in the summer. But listening to the night quiet of Fall and Winter is also pleasant.

Over the next few days, perhaps we'll be able to hear the screech owl that visits us most years...