house, at night, when everyone is asleep, the sounds of nature fill the air. Actually, the noises don't come from outside, but inside the house, and I'm not talking about my husband snoring. Chirp, chirp, chirp, is what we hear. It is the familiar sound of crickets. Normally, we would get cricket noises in our garden in the Summer. But it's only March, and these crickets are in a glass cage, living happily for a few days, until they get fed to our lizards. We have a leopard gekko and a bearded dragon who need a good, tasty meal every now and then. The lizards belong to the kids, but because I am the mum of the house, I am the one who basically takes care of the animals. I'm the one who goes off to the pet shop to by these bags of wriggling, jumpy insects. I'm also the one who has to feed them, so they can be healthy enough to feed Anthony and Dillon, the family reptiles. There is a lot of feeding going on in this house, and unfortunately for me, it involves crickets. I do love their chirping noises; however, at night they get very loud, and so I have to put their cage in the room that is farthest from the bedrooms. My sister-in-law used to have reptiles, and told me a horror story that involved crickets. She had bought an extra large bag of crickets from the pet shop, so she wouldn't have to return for a few weeks. She purchased two hundred and fifty crickets in all, and happily took them home so her sons could feed the lizards. Well, at some point in the process, a hole appeared in the bag, and all of the crickets escaped and ran into various places of her house. Two hundred and fifty of them! She said that it took them days to find the noisy ones, but it's a mystery what happened to a large number of the others, the smart ones who kept their mouths shut, or should I say, their legs still.

Grammar notes.

Related verbs: to fill the air, to feed, to chirp, to involve.

1. The sound of jazz filled the air as the musician practiced the saxophone.

2. Come on kids, you need to feed the dogs!

3. In Spring, the birds chirp very loudly early in the morning.

4. The criminal case involved a teacher, a lawyer, and a baker.