I have a cricket. His name is Charles. Actually I’d never named him before today, but for the purposes of this post, I thought I’d engage the reader more on this mundane story by giving him a name.
Charles and I have been living together for at least 5 years, although we have separate beds. Mine is on the first floor and Charles sleeps in his bed somewhere in the ventilation system on the third floor. I’ve been listening to his incessant chirping since the day he moved in.
Last night I thought I’d killed him, when I Black Flagged the shit out of a jumpy little critter banging himself against the stairs and the carpet. I thought it might have been a cockroach until he started jumping around like a cricket.
I took a picture of him clinging to the side of stair #5, gasping for air, but only sucking in miniature nerve gas, on the verge of death, in the hopes of sending it to MMP in the NorCal office for ID confirmation. But I forgot my little adapter thingy that takes those little data cards and plugs into a USB port, whatever they’re called - see? -I don’t know the name of anything. Anyway, I found a reasonable facsimile. This is what he looked like prior to kicking the cricket bucket:
Except his antennae went up and back away from his head, rather than jutting forward.
(Ewww, now I’m all creeped out after Googling cricket pics.)
Alas, poor Charles, I knew him well. And now he’s been scooped off the poison-soaked carpet. That’s right, I chucked Chuck like yesterday’s trash.
The question is, who’s the new guy who took over his post and began chirping today in the 3rd floor ventilation system? And what am I going to name him? And what the hell is the life span of a frickin’ cricket?
