What kind of insect/ animals was in the story?

Examples from the text:

A grindstone stands where the bleeding tree stood, just outside the kitchen door, and now if an oriole sings in the elm, its song seems to die up in the leaves, a silvery dust.

It was covered with a film of Paris green sprinkled to kill the rats, and screech owls had built a nest inside it.

Beside the stream, he planned, we'd build us a house of whispering leaves and the swamp birds would be our chickens.

"I haven't heard a rain frog," said Mama, who believed in signs, as she served the bread around the table.