Constable: Cicadas, crickets and sunsets tell us when summer yields to fall
If you believe in science, and you should after all we've been through, today is our last full day of summer. Fall begins for us at 2:21 p.m. Wednesday. But we all have individual signs that tell us when summer is over.
For kids and parents, the most obvious sign of summer's end is the reopening of school. Others mark the end of summer with a season-ending backyard cookout. Some relish a final outdoor concert. The summer might be over for you when you log your last laps in an outdoor swimming pool. Others mark the end of summer with a changing of the guard in their closets, with sun dresses and sleeveless tops giving way to cashmere and corduroy.
A Chicago Bears victory and the no-name lineup of the Chicago Cubs hammer home the point that summer is over and fall is here for some fans. A few people know summer is over when they put their boat in storage, or close down their summer cottage.
For me, insects are a harbinger. While the suburbs didn't get the swarms of Brood X 17-year cicadas that were plentiful in southern Indiana, Ohio and some states farther east, we always have some cicadas. Their mating songs seem louder the hotter it is, and they even change the sound after they have found a mate to let others know they scored.
They started in July, and the past few days have been like “last call” at a singles bar. A few straggler males. clearly on their last legs, still make the sound, but without much enthusiasm. Sunday was the first day we didn't hear any, and I found a couple of dead cicadas. So summer is over.
It was easier during my rural upbringing to mark the signs that summer was done, those memories rekindled as we spent this past weekend on the family farm in rural Indiana. Instead of cicadas buzzing past our heads, we were treated to dozens of monarch butterflies, apparently stopping by the farm on their way to Mexico.
The silence of the outdoor cicadas is replaced by the inside chirps of black crickets. With the grass so dry that it crunches beneath your feet, crickets come inside looking for moisture.
Barnyard crickets were the bait of choice for fisherman LaVerne Niblick, who was our mail carrier, hired man and mayor of our little town. But inside, we never could find where their sounds were coming from.
An old wives' tale insists that Osage oranges, the wrinkly green fruits we called hedge balls, repel crickets. Every year, after the first chirp of an indoor cricket, my mom would deposit a few hedge balls in corners around the house. They did no good. Outside, we knew summer was waning and fall was approaching when the orb-weaver spiders went on overnight building sprees.
One of the biggest signs of fall and the end of summer is the harvest moon. Given that name because the full moon provided enough light for farmers to harvest their crops well into the night, the harvest moon appeared Monday night.
Of course, farmers with halogen headlights don't need moonlight anymore.
As a teenager operating the combine that harvested corn and soybeans, I remember the stuffy cab, always too hot or too cold, filling with dust, the steering wheel's vibrations rattling my bones, and the noise making it impossible to talk. The newest combines come with a GPS steering system, heated leather seats with lumbar support, air-conditioning, a mini-fridge and multiple computer screens and camera views that allow you to work in comfort without having to leave the cab.
The combine I operated as a kid harvested four rows of corn at a time. The largest combines today can operate a 24-row corn head and cost nearly $500,000.
The beauty of summer's transformation into fall is most evident with our sunsets. Maybe it's the wildfires out West, or the dust from combines harvesting corn, but every Midwest sunset in September is a thing of beauty that announces to the world that the seasons are changing. And way better than the chirping of crickets.