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Progressive Observations About the Crickets with Which I Share A Room

Apr 4 2002

Day 1: There seems to be a cricket in the room chirping softly and occasionally. Crickets are rustic and novel. Glad for the company and the reminder of sublime moments I have experienced outdoors. I think I'll like this new place.

Day 2: Crickets are sprites, kindly spirits, good luck (see A Cricket in Times Square and Pinnochio). Perhaps I should do a paper or essay on this -- maybe a more general "Entomorphology and Manifestations of Benificent Familiars in 20th Century American Media and Literature". At any rate, I will take their presence as a positive omen.

Day 3: What do crickets eat? Should I be worried that my cricket will starve to death? There can't be much to eat under the fridge, where he seems to have taken refuge.

Day 4: I have discovered another cricket that is fond of the stairway, which I step carefully around. I am worried that some careless soul will injure him.

Day 5: The cricket is still on the stairs. Perhaps he is already injured. However, my pity does not move me to action. I am not comfortable taking in another guest just yet.

Day 6: Found a cricket on my blanket. Chased him off. I now beleive there are at least two crickets in my room. As long as they keep to their place under the fridge, I am fine. I appreciate the luck they bring. The cricket on the stairs is gone.

Day 7: There may be more crickets in my room. I can identify at least two crickets of different appearance (light and small, larger and dark), but have made seperate sightings in suffeciently diverse locations of the room within an adequately short amount of time to justify at least the suspicion of three. Also, I am beginning to distinguish between different kinds of chirps.

Day 8: Have I been particularly lucky in the last week?

Day 9: One chirp could be characterized as the "peaceful outdoor humming." The other could be described as "higher pitched, more frequent, and very annoying." At least one cricket under the fridge chose to perform a monotonic sonata consisting entirely of the latter for most of last night. I can allow for artistic differences, but this will have to be addressed.

Day 10: I have raised my estimate of the lower bound on the cricket population to eight. I have occasionally had to bang on the floor outside the fridge and ask that they keep it down. My computer began to make strange chirping noises in the middle of the night, the hard drive chopping and whirring frantically. As I approached it, a cricket scurried away.

Day 11: I returned home to find an apparent cricket party -- loud music and carousing crickets all over the place. There were two making out in the corner. With a firm hand I chased several out and spoke sternly with the others regarding respect, decency, the need for periods of silence, and if at all possible, my preference that they stop trespassing among my sleeping area, clothing, and other possesions.

Day 12: After another night of chirping, perhaps the full destructive force which caused Tommy Lee Jones to name the unearthly weapon he issued to Will Smith in Men in Black a "noisy cricket" has become clear to me. How inconsiderate can they get? In any case, it is obvious that George Selden and Disney took artistic license to excess and created fiction of the most speculative sort. Kindly sprites my navel.

Day 13: The crickets have been warned that I am weighing the relative merits of insecticides. Yet our conversations have all become the same, like a composition with only one note, round and round we go. Well, my cricket friends, Phillip Glass you ain't. Don't cross me again, or your morning coffee will taste very, very different indeed.

Day 14: Hey, there's a spider web under the fridge. Spiders eat crickets, and are quiet. They are also good omens, kindly sprites (see, for example, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White and Be Nice to Spiders by Margaret Bloom Graham)...

Comments

This was great!!! I stumbled on to it after unsuccessfully trying to capture a cricket who had snuck through my back door. He managed to escape my tupperware and lid catching device and crawl under my new leather couch. I took my wonders of "what will he eat?" and "maybe he'll eat the spiders I am having a problem with" to my computer for answers. Unfortunately, I have learned they eat leather and contrary to popular belief, spiders eat them...sigh. I enjoyed reading your "two weeks with the crickets!!!"
2005-08-01 23:26:03
Dianna

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