They are the children of August nights, obeying an inverse convention of being heard but not seen. I wait through half a summer to hear the first of the katydids’ thrumming love songs, which seem such a vital part of the knot of sensations associated with sweating through a summer night. Lying awake in the chance heat and humidity of a near silent mid-July night is unnerving and almost unbearable without the zhuh-zhuh-zhuh, zhuh-zhuh-zhuh that in August shuffles even the most heat-sensitive souls into the stupor that passes for sleep on a too-hot night. The sound can be a great comfort to the discomforted.

I am not alone in my katydid vigil. Out there in the night is a black and orange creature, a winged minion of the jack-o-lantern, with more sinister intentions toward the katydids. It is the Great Golden Digger Wasp. At more than an inch long, it is one of the larger wasps you will find foraging in the gardens and borders. Sphex ichneumoneus is quite harmless despite its fearsome appearance, though it shows some nonaggressive curiosity about humans and their pets. I should say they are harmless unless you are a long-horned grasshopper of the tettigoniidae family, which includes katydids.