There's a new sound, the newest sound around...

I was hanging out on the patio with my sister a weekend ago and burning up the last of the old cedar shakes when over (or perhaps under) the snapping fire of that wasted potential and the distant roar of Friday night traffic on the freeway we became aware of a rustling among the leaves...something not unlike a small rodent scurrying, except that the sound was coming at us from every direction and in little fluttering waves...No way could we be surrounded by that many mice. Could it be the Spring growth coming up? Much too animated and widespread for that. Beetles, maybe? Too early. What?? I grabbed my headlamp and followed the noise with light until we spotted a movement under the leaves, and then we saw them: Night Crawlers. (Oddly, neither of us had really understood before why they're called that.) There were dozens of them, wriggling up from below to take part in this strange and slinky dance in the night. How many more were underground, in the the front yard, in the neighborhood? And how had we come to middle age without having known this?