There was a little cricket that loved watching the birds fly around in the sky. His parents would often warn him of the birds because, if you didn’t know, birds eat all sorts of small insects. However, the cricket paid no attention to that sort of talk. He would hop up onto a branch of a small shrub and mumble to himself, “they just don’t see the beauty in anything!”

One day the cricket sat on his branch and a beetle came fluttering by him. “Hello, hello!” he said, getting the beetle’s attention. “You fly almost like the birds in the clouds. Isn’t that marvelous?”

The cricket hadn’t seen very many flying creatures besides the birds and watching the beetle was an astounding sight.

The beetle fluttered over to the ground below the branch. “I don’t know if it is marvelous but it’s just what I do.”

Cricket responded, not thinking too much about what the beetle had said. “Well, do you think you could fly up there with the birds?” He pointed with one of his legs toward the sky.

“I doubt it. I just fly around where I need to go; looking for food and taking peaceful flights around our little home.”

“But have you tried to go up with the birds?”

“Why would I want to do a thing like that?” Beetle was shocked at the question.

Cricket was persistent, “You have the gift to fly so why would you not use it to go as high as you can?”

“Well, for one, I have no reason to be up there so far from my food and my home. For two, I don’t want to be up there when a bird shows up to eat me!”

“You don’t get it either…” he sighed. “I should have known. Here I sit with useless wings and you just flutter around blindly. No one sees the beauty like I do.”

“Beauty? They’re birds. They eat insects like me. I have my wings in a dark shell that lets me flutter around safely and if I were to fall I would not be hurt too bad. I crawl about on the ground and remain disguised from birds like those.” She gestured to where Cricket had been staring. “I don’t go around looking for beauty in the things that would eat me in a second.”

Cricket grumbled, “Well that may work for you, but it certainly will not work for me. I see the beauty of those marvelous creatures and one day I will join them in the sky.”

Beetle raised her brow, “If you say so.” She went up in a great flutter with her lacelike wings stretching outward, taking her above the shrub.

Cricket remained on his branch for quite sometime. Dawn finally began to break and the sounds of other crickets faded. Surely his parents were very worried about him by now, but he was tired of being told all about himself.

He was staring up into the sky when suddenly he heard a great squawking from the other side of the shrub. Cricket quickly hopped off the branch and bounced about on the grassy floor. He looked up and, behold, one of the most beautiful sights. A huge feathered beast sat there on the topmost branch of Crickets little hideaway. It was the biggest blue jay he had ever seen.

“Hello …bird.” Cricket managed to let the words escape from his mouth. He didn’t know what to say.

Finding it a bizarre encounter, the bird simply titled its head. “Hello?”

“I’ve watched the beautiful patterns of flight you and all the other birds make in the skies. It must be so marvelous to fly around all day.”

The bird nodded its beak. “Yes, I suppose it is nice. But it’s how we’re made.”

Cricket was too focused on the fact that he was now talking to one of these glorious birds that he failed to pay any attention to what the bird was saying.

The bird, seeing how this insect was so mesmerized by him, began to stretch its wings, nonchalantly.

“Beetle said she was afraid of you. She thinks you’re only interested in eating other insects like her.” Cricket spoke abruptly, staring at the big blue set of wings.

“Did she say that? Well, I guess that’s her opinion. Beetles can’t fly like us birds, She is probably jealous of us and doesn’t want you to learn the art of flying.”

“You mean you can teach me how to fly like a bird?”

“Well, look at you! You have those wings and you are sleek and small. Look at me, I am big and yet I can still loop about in the air. Surely I could show you something.”

Cricket was so excited he thought he might faint. He brought himself to the ground and pushed off with great force, hopping as high as he could and gliding around in a spiral. He figured he would show off his jump in front of the tremendous blue-colored bird.

“See, my friend, it is only a matter of learning!” The bird opened his beak in a polite smile.

Cricket was frantic, “Yes! Yes! I will learn. Beetle could never look as sleek as me as I fly through the sky. She can only flutter around. But you birds are so agile as you swoop down to the ground and loop back up. Teach me and I will learn quickly.”

The bird just continued smiling. “Okay, first you must jump on my back. I will take you up to the treetops and then you must listen to everything I say. If you don’t obey then something terrible might happen. You wouldn’t want to prove that beetle right, would you? I’m the one who can fly, so listen to me.”

Cricket nodded, assuring the bird that he would be a first-rate student. At once, he spun around and hopped very high as the bird turned its back to the insect. Cricket nimbly wedged his feet into the feathery back of the bird. He was astonished that he was given this opportunity. He only left his home and the grassy patch for one moment and already he was changing into something magnificent.

Cricket thought of the beetle and her desire to simply flutter around the forest as she always had. She was wasting her life. How could someone be happy like that? He watched as the bird suddenly had them both soaring away from the branches and into the morning sky. It was breathtaking to see the world from this new angle. The bird would swoop and glide through the air. Cricket stared in disbelief at the ground below them. He would do anything to be able to fly like this all the time.

“Are you ready for your first instruction, my friend?” The bird called to the small insect on his back.

“Yes, what must I do?” Cricket asked with the most sincerity his voice could produce.

“First, you must jump off of my back and then I will catch you.”

Cricket was determined.

***

Beetle fluttered by the branches of her home the morning after she spoke to that strange young cricket. She peacefully swayed her body through the fresh morning air, taking in the floral aromas and the noises made by all the other insects enjoying themselves on the forest floor. She had little worries as she gathered food and saw beauty in the leaves and flowers all around her.

After meditating on her home here by the grassy patch, Beetle curiously looked up to see what the cricket had been so intent to watch. At that moment she saw a large blue jay swoop down to the earth in one of its menacing predatory strikes. It seemed to have caught a strange thing in its beak as it flew. As quickly as it caught that insect it looped and went up into the sky to strike again at other unsuspecting prey. She didn’t understand why anyone would want to gaze at those beasts.

Beetle’s outstretched wings closed as she came to stop on a branch. She looked down toward her home and the spot by the grassy patch a little ways off where she knew the crickets lived. “Oh, to be creatures made for beauty’s sake.”