Lately the crickets will not shut up. They have something to get off their chitinous chests, and they chatter so loudly you can't hear the planes landing overhead. We all love crickets, of course, because it's a comforting song of the season, a serenade that takes us back to the endless summers of yore. A warm August night, the trebly melody of bug-notes drifting in the window as you faded off to sleep — it's one of those things that completes a summer.

Same with the droning cicadas. Every year you notice the first cicada you hear and remind yourself: You'll never notice the last one. One day they're droning away like a bright drill through an iron bar. The next they're silent. It's a week before you realize they've said all they needed to say, and closed the book on summer.

Because they're dead!

Sorry, just needed to stop with the sentimental mush. Crickets are great, but two small points:

1. We'd feel different if the crickets were really, really loud and never shut up. Everyone's haggard at the office the next day because it's Cricket Season. Retailers would sell Cricket Muffs. We'd snap at loved ones and blame the Cricket Jitters.

2. We would feel very different about them if crickets were really, really big. I worked for a summer in a warehouse that was full of crickets, and they're nothing like your bipedal Jiminy Cricket types with the hat and waistcoat. One or two, you can ignore. A dozen clumped together, ew. Fifty in a writhing mass, get a flamethrower. If they were the size of cats, the eveningsong would be terrifying, and people would string electrified wire in their bushes.

Zap zap bzzt zap screech screech zap bzzt. "Are they gone now, daddy? Are the monsters gone?" "Not yet, honey. Soon. It'll be over soon." Zap screech bzzt.

And in the morning you'd have to clean it up. With a shovel. And you'd have to put them in the compost bin because they're organic.

Say, did know you can tell the temperature from their chirps? Count the number of chirps per minute, then divide by ⅞, add nine and multiply by 1.5 in Base Eight, and you have the temp. Unless you have European crickets, which chirp in Celsius. I have no idea who figured this out. It's like discovering that the yowls of alleycats in heat are related to the number of sunspots. Whoever did it was pretty proud of himself, you know. "Eureka! This must be how cave men discovered the temperature!"

Well, enjoy the crickets while you can. The song is unchanging from year to year, even though the insects themselves perish. If you grew up hearing frog-song, as well, you know what a guttural counterpoint they offered — frogs were the spirit animals of 12-year-old boys who burp the alphabet, and their basso belches gave the evening a silly sonata both low and high. There soon will be a day without cicadas and a night without crickets. Then comes the silence. Then comes the geese overhead, a ragged zipper closing up the season, honking farewell.

But that's still a ways away. We've much summer left. It's not like the Fair starts in 10 days, you know. It's 11 days away. Practically forever.

james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks