Jiminy Crickets

I can hear a cricket chirping.  No, I am NOT in some warm climate, camping by a creek.  I am in my house, post-holiday turkey dinner, it is minus 4,000 outside and a bloody cricket is chirping.  You see, Lenny the lizard is growing up and he requires more food.  So we began buying the ‘large’ crickets.  The reason that they are larger is because they are older and when they get older, some sprout wings.  What the hell and why me?

I have had an aversion to winged things since the time when I was four years old and was chased by geese while my parents and grandparents laughed.  I can still hear them shouting “drop the bread” while I ran and ran and was eventually bitten.  Rude!   

While I do not dislike all birds, I am not terribly fond of them either. The only bird I have ever really liked up close was a Cockatoo named Casey that my cousin had.  That bird was cool. He talked a bit and on command he would stand on top of his cage and do a head bobbing dance.  We would laugh and call it “the Stevie Wonder” (with apologies to Stevie Wonder).  The louder the music, the bigger the dance.  But I never had enough guts to hold Casey and over the years I have not developed a fondness for any other close encounter of the bird kind.  Sometimes at work the loading dock door gets left open too long and we get a sparrow inside.  Recently one made its way to back offices.  The poor thing was terrified and in a panic it flew fast and furious around the area.  I have no shame in saying that I screamed “get it out” and took cover.  No, I’m not fond of winged things.

But the crickets are not going anywhere; they are a staple in Len’s diet.  At some point I have to “man up” and deal with this chirping insect.  Lenny has not been successful in hunting the creepy thing down. In fact, he has become a little reclusive.  I think the chirping freaks him out.  This afternoon I was looking in the cage, shuddering at the wings on that bug.  Its head has changed shape too and it looks awful, akin to the head of a praying mantis. Gross. I then observed it and a couple of its nearly winged friends drinking from the water bowl like a herd of cows to the trough. At that moment I made a plan make the winged villains a little less agile by way of dehydration.  Less agile means better chances for Len for a successful hunt.  And even if the hunt fails, seeing those dudes on their backs with their toes up to the mesh lid will give us all peace of mind.

Tonight I fed and watered Len outside the cage and did not refill the water bowl inside the cage.  Len will be fine and hopefully the winged one will be gone by the morning.   In the meantime I will try not to hear the chirping.  I will probably dream of geese...