The Creepy Cricket Case

It started one dark, suffocatingly hot night somewhere in Oklahoma, where crickets grow to gargantuan sizes with voices to match.

The noise started mysteriously. The children rose from the couch and sought out the noise, which grew increasingly stronger as they moved towards their bathroom. Having located the cricket, they did what every self-respecting child does when they find a giant bug. They shut the bathroom door and ran and told their parents.

Being of a very sleepy nature, the parents found no reason to rise from their beds and rescue the children from the trauma of possibly having to do their natural duties in the presence of a cricket.

I, being the mother of the parent pair, didn't stop to think that the cricket would relocate during the night. Thus it came to pass that at an uncertain point in time during my slumber, the massive cricket perched at the head of my bed and screeched out a nightmarish lullaby. For five hours straight. Being the submissive female that I am (cough cough) I allowed my husband to take on the task of hunting down the critter and giving it a proper disposal.

However, we could not so much as lift a finger without the cricket falling into a dead silence. Where was it? Could it be on the bed? In the laundry basket directly at the head of it? Perhaps it hid underneath the bed but wherever it was, it obviously placed itself somewhere at the head of the bed and then made itself invisible.

The unfruitful search led to an even less fruitful attempt to fall back asleep. What if it crawled on one of us? The bugger sounded more like a chirping lion than a cricket, thus we feared the possibility of mutilation or at the least, waking up to find ourselves deafened for life.

We spent the next day walking about cautiously, every step causing us to listen carefully for the dreaded CRUNCH of having stepped barefoot on the dreadful monster.

Where had it gone?

Finally we decided to give up. Wherever it was, it was silent and if you've ever had an Oklahoman cricket spend hours in what seemed to be inches from your face, the ensuing silence causes a false sense of relief and calm.

Fast forward to the next evening. My lovely, cricket-catching challenged daughters made a lovely dinner. During the course of making this dinner, they dropped a piece of broccoli on the floor. This I did not know. My husband, not feeling very well, stayed in bed while I went to the kitchen to make him an alternative dinner of rice and bananas.

Which is how it happened that I walked into the kitchen alone to discover the piece of broccoli on the floor. Had it simply been a piece of broccoli, I'd have swooped it up and thrown it in the garbage.

So why did I scream for my sick husband instead?

I screamed for him because a cricket the size of Texas was standing there munching on the broccoli! I'm not sure how big a cricket's stomach is, but it sure seemed to be making fast work out of the top of that vegetable!

Now we know. Crickets like broccoli.

My husband came with his size 12 shoe and made quick work of both the cricket and the broccoli and life was restored to its normal, fear-free state of being.

I am, however, having issues with buying and eating any more broccoli. What if I don't brush good enough before bed and there's still a piece of broccoli in my teeth? I snore, so surely my mouth is open at times. Would that be a giant invitation to a future invader of our home?

All I can say is YUCK! I'm no John the Baptist. I keep my shirt on and leave the eating of bugs to that crazy guy on television who eats cheese with live worms crawling about it and thinks scorpions make a tasty snack. I did eat a scorpion once, but it had the decency to be embedded into a sucker and best of all, DEAD!

Which is how I prefer my bugs.

How about you? :tongue3:

 

It's very possible that it was the same cricket. Something that size probably only need to take three hops from your state to mine. :laugh: