by Margie Hanrahan

"Yes, I’d like 1000 1/4-inch mealworms and 500 pinhead crickets."  My 'bird' food was on it’s way and I’d be receiving it within a few days, the woman on the other end of the phone informed me. The first package came two days later. I love getting packages, even if they are filled with bugs. I found the box in my back hallway and carried it straight into the kitchen to look for a knife to slice open the securely taped lid. I opened it to find a little burlap-like bag filled with creepy crawly mealies, ready for my hungry birds’ dinners.

 Slight disappoint crept over me when I found the yellow mail sticker informing me I had to pick up the crickets at the post office. "This is WAY inconvenient." I thought to myself. Why in the world would one box of live insects be left in the hall over the other was beyond me. In any event, I filled out the little form asking the postal service to leave the cricket box in my back hall, even if I wasn’t home.

It took another two days to get my crickets. I arrived home after work to find my husband standing in the driveway. He was on his way to a meeting and was waiting for me to get home to take care of our son. We were talking a few minutes before he said, "Oh yeah, a package came today...it says "LIVE" on the side of it, so I left it in the hall." He’s always had an aversion to boxes marked "LIVE". I left him in a cloud of dust and he yelled after me..."Yeah it’s been nice talking to ya!"

"Another package!" I thought. "Two in one week! This was awesome." I grabbed the box and headed into the kitchen, straight for the official tape slicing knife. With three easy cuts I opened the top. Much to my surprise, these crickets did not, I repeat DID NOT, come in a little burlap-like bag. A few came shooting out unexpectedly, so I quickly slammed shut the box. Since I hadn’t bothered to change clothes yet, I snagged a coffee carafe and put it on top of the box and ran upstairs to change. Now, having the attention span of "ahhh what was I saying?" I, of course, changed, checked my e-mail, folded a few towels and then decided to get something to eat. That meant going back into the kitchen...THE CRICKETS!!

I left my 3 1/2 year old son, Sean, upstairs playing a video game on the computer and stopped dead in my tracks as I reached the kitchen linoleum. There sitting on the floor in front of me were three tiny crickets all facing me headed for the dining room. I felt my heart sink with a feeling similar to that of leaving on vacation and realizing the iron was still on. Slowly I took a step forward. "OH MY _ _ _" I said out loud. There was another 10 or 12 crickets partying enthusiastically with their new found freedom. I took a final step forward. The floor in front of me looked like someone had thrown a two pound box of raisins on the ground. Now, let me just add at this time, a little known fact-- quarter inch crickets can and WILL escape from even the slightest crack in a box.

 "SEAN!!!!" I screamed, "GET DOWN HERE AND HELP ME CATCH THESE CRICKETS!!!" Being that it was normal for this kind of thing to happen in our house, he screamed back "OKAY MOM!" without question and came running down the stairs. I grabbed some paper bags and made a rush for the counter. Crickets were all over my cupboard and when I got within reach, they went every which way like a popcorn machine gone bad. Sean began to pursue the same ones I did on the counter. Unfortunately, they were over his head on the cupboard, and he set off a perilous lemming-like cricket stampede to the floor. They were jumping everywhere and I was beginning to get grossed out and panicky. I knew I needed a plan. "Here!" I said to Sean handing him a paper bag. "Catch the ones on the floor...I’ll get the ones up here..."

The poor kid was carefully trying to catch and contain the crickets that were cruising along my kitchen floor. "Hurry up...catch them! Catch them!" I prompted anxiously. He accidentally crushed one and said in an upset voice, "Mom I think I hurt him." "I don’t care if you kill them," I said deliriously, "just get them into the bag." Visions of my husband coming home had starting creeping through my head. We worked diligently for 15 minutes in silence before he enthusiastically said, "I can’t wait to tell Daddy about the crickets." I couldn’t believe the little squealer had turned on me. "NO, DON’T DO THAT!" I blurted. He stopped suddenly, surprised at my reaction. I regained control. "I shouldn’t tell Daddy?" he innocently questioned. "#(*!&*#*!" I thought to myself. "Well, of course you shouldn’t lie about things, honey, it’s just that Daddy probably wouldn’t be interested in this kind of stuff--I mean if he asks you if your mother let 500 pinhead crickets loose in the house by all means you should tell him."

He stared at me blankly. "Mom, I’m tired of catching crickets, I’m going to play videos." And then, knowing he had me beat, he left me to fend for myself. "HUH? Isn’t this fun? Come on help me..." I pleaded. "You little brat, I carried you for 9 months..." I thought to myself. "Now I was desperate. I was truly tired of playing mother bird catching insects and worms every night and I NEEDED these stinking crickets. As soon as I’d make a move to grab one the rest would jump then freeze in place. I devised a plan where I’d stay still for a minute, lulling them into a false sense of security. Stupidly, they’d creep back onto the counter top, at which time, I’d sweep them into the sink where it was too slippery to get out, easily catching them from there. It was at this point, when I started thinking I was surely a mastermind, that I figured out what kind of an idiot I really was. I really hadn’t intended to take extreme measures, but they were now sitting on my walls mocking me with my feeble attempts at capture. The sink method got old really fast and I had already wasted most of the night. I hated to do it but they backed me up to the wall so to speak, so I got out the bug spray and went to town. I felt bad, but I really did my best at recapturing most of them and I think I got about 75% back, so all in all it wasn’t a total loss.

 I went to bed around 12:30 only to be woken up a little while later. "I think I’ve been very patient..." my husband, Bill, said through his teeth. I could hear him breathing like a heavy smoker running a flight of stairs. "I just cleaned up a bunch of crickets out of the pantry..." (conveniently located in our kitchen--of which I had overlooked in my cricket hunt). In the darkness I could see his face contorting as he tried to remain calm. "I’ve been finding crickets in the house for a WEEK!" he went on, this time a little louder. (He was referring to a few basement birdcage escapees purchased from the pet store last week). I rolled my eyes dramatically. Here was my chance for the highly skilled marital technique of "argument diversion." "You haaveee noootttt!" I said drawling apparent disgust in my voice. I was strategically reversing the discussion into how he was grossly exaggerating on his part. "They JUST got out tonight...so you couldn’t possibly have been catching ..." "Whaaaat? Got OUT? WHERE????" he interrupted in rapid fire succession. ("Did I really just say that? Foiled!" I thought.) "Well, I mean, um...well, a few got out is all..." I scrambled looking for an exit. "How many got out?" he questioned. "The problem was really under control right away." I said, digging myself a deep hole. "How many?" he interrogated again. "Oh abit fivm unred," I mumbled incoherently. "HOW MANY?"

 He left the room without looking back. "I cleaned off those cluttery kitchen cupboards you hate so much," I yelled after him. I sat up in bed, refusing to give up. I chirped in one last ditch comment to play up the motivational cleaning aspect of the whole fiasco -- "Don’t they look sparkly nice?" Apparently all had fallen on deaf ears. "That went well!" I thought smugly.

It took approximately three days to fully rid the kitchen of the uninvited house guests. Apparently, many had run for cover when they saw me marine crawling through the kitchen with my Raid can. I called Judy Seiler the next evening. "Did you know crickets come loose in a box?" "Sure!" she said, "Why?"

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