ALL I HEAR ARE CRICKETS by Lancee Whetman
- Mason Young
- May 15
- 1 min read
Updated: May 23

Entomology. Makes me a bit squeamish thinking about hexapoda. Six-legged fears of the
Animalia kingdom
Arthropoda phylum
Insecta class.
Nuptial gifts, like salivary foods, to copulate with pheromones.
Sex: males. They are soil suitors—larvae to lovers. Thorax sprung-wings. Nerve impulses, locomotion flapping, skyward stalwart.
Multigenerational migrations of locust plagues—a biblical reality: They can travel up to 90 miles a day in swarms of 80 million, the internet reports (and so does Exodus, as I proceed to exit Egypt). Aphid Armageddon.
The annual vulnerabilities of food-chain fungivores and herbaceous hosts. Sap sucker, plant zapper—all leaves are made of unequal tissue. Perennial nitrogen. Biochemical defenses—cyanogenic reactions to foliage. Call it: Predator toxification.
Create a colony, create a climate—ever-changing like our ecological exoskeletons. Molting to adulthood. Shed it, silkworm!
Queen bee. Bee castes, bee social, bee brood. Bee scared, honey bee. Humans prefer pollution > pollen.
Specialist strategies. Generalist gumption. Adaptation is a challenge when you’re digging dirt for free.
Phenological phenomena: the interdependence of species. What’s a synonym for survival? Please don’t say resilience.
Stop stepping on sidewalk ants: a series of stop-gap measures.
Beat the beetles (Beatles) to bed. Four (4) carabid runners down Abbey Road. Under evolution’s influence, Child of Nature plays on the record-player, but all I hear tonight are crickets.
Lancee Whetman (she/her) is a human. Being. She is an Alaska-based writer who has self-published three poetry collections—Blinded by Feeling (2023), Further West and Fireweed (2024), and Chapped Lips (2025). She can be found walking in the woods with her dog, Howdy.