Last night I was sung to sleep by the soft trill of crickets. Much more lovely than the torturous rasping sounds of another night-time singer, the katydid, which performed its monotonous repertory all last week.
There are many food chains in the garden. Skinks eat the crickets and cockroaches, and snakes and cats hunt the skinks. It goes on and on, cycling around and around.
I love most of the denizens, and try to treat them all with equal respect. So in a kind of bittersweet tribute to the lives of crickets, I present a photo of the skink, taken in spring when the sun was just warming the deck.
The Japanese five-striped skink is a kind of lizard, with the Latin name Eumeces latiscutatus.
The gorgeous metallic colors indicate juveniles of either sex. Females retain the metallic sheen into adulthood, while the males morph into a duller brown color, with added reds during mating season.
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