Friday, December 20, 2013

Random Life Post -- On crickets

 So, I have sons and my sons have frogs. Considering this, although I love the sound crickets make and think they're very nice bugs...they're also very tasty to amphibians so many crickets have given their lives for our froggies.

It's a sad truth, however it is a truth.

In my years of amphibian life, we've had some interesting cricket misadventures. For instance, my son went into a pet store with me. I needed fish food and filters so I sent him over to purchase three dozen crickets for the froggies.

He came back. "They won't sell me crickets."

Me, "Why not?"

Him, "They don't sell pets to people under eighteen."

Turns out this rule is in place to keep kids from buying and abusing pets, which is wonderful, however, this left me with a ton of questions.

"So, you do KNOW what we do with crickets, right? I mean, you know they're not going home to become pets, right? That we're planning to feed these bugs to bigger animals?"

The salesperson, "We're aware. They're feeder crickets. That's why we sell them."

"Riddle me this, then...what could any child do to a cricket worse than what I have planned for them? I'm taking them home to sacrifice them to frogs. I mean...they're getting swallowed whole while alive. This is not good times for the crickets."

Aside from that, I've also discovered entirely by accident that you can freeze crickets for short periods of time and they will thaw out and come magically come back to life. Long story short, when you have children unloading the car after shopping, sometimes the see-through bag of bugs gets left in the car. I live in a VERY cold place in the winter so sometimes the crickets come in the house an hour or so after we got home.

By then? Bag of dead looking bugs in a bag. The first time it happened, I opened and sadly dumped the 'carcasses' into the garbage.

Imagine my surprise when the kitchen was then crawling with singing bugs because they'd come back to life and managed to get out of the garbage can.

So, well, point of all this? If your holiday has been stressful, just remember...

At least you're not a cricket.

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