The electronic cricket.

This gadget consists of a musical toy gun, a battery holder salvaged from a shorted out toy television remote, a piezo disk and a volume control knob. In a sense I built this device from scratch. The resulting sounds resemble those made by crickets or similar insects so I call this gadget the electronic cricket. It resembles Reed Ghazala's Vox Insecta but is considerably simpler in design and limited in terms of sound possibilities. Re: shorted out toys: Initially, I started my circuit bending experiments soldering additional wires between leads. I'd advise against this practice; it most likely would eliminate sound possibilities, if not short out circuit boards completely. The best bet would be to install components such as pushbuttons, switches and the like between contact points. If you hear interesting variations on sound when you test the points (using two small screwdrivers connected via wire by way of alligator clips), you can preserve these variations and generate them at will.