A Sticky Wicket (Caused by a Cricket)

I have previously remarked that I am willing to live with the crickets that cohabitate with us, provided that they stay in the closets. This has not always been a great arrangement; especially that time when I put my bare foot into a shoe containing cricket remains. The main problem I have with our crickets is that they are really, really slow. When faced with certain demise under a shoe or magazine, they just sit there. Usually I will try to nudge them toward the closet or behind a piece of furniture, but half the time I end up breaking one or more of their legs.

I recently decided that possibly the crickets appear in the middle of the floor because they are ready to die, perhaps of starvation. I have no idea what crickets eat, although I could probably name five or six things that eat crickets, including people in Korea if I remember correctly. I decided to ask the internet what crickets eat, to determine whether or not they are finding food in my closets. I’ll admit that I was also eager to confirm that they do not dine on mouse droppings or cockroaches or human remains or other things that I’m assuming are not in my closets.

While information on what crickets eat was rather hard to find, I did learn this information from Wikipedia:

"Crickets are popular pets and are considered good luck in Asia, especially China where they are kept in cages (Carrera 1991). It is also common to have them as caged pets in some European countries, at least in the Iberian Peninsula. Cricket fighting as a blood sport has also been popular, particularly in Macao."

Um, what?

As it turns out, according to ezine articles:

“Crickets are omnivores and feed on almost anything-usually organic materials, plant decay, grass, fruits, seedling plants, fungi and even meat. Crickets need good diet otherwise they tend to feed on each other.”

So, I’m going to go with that last bit - that I’ve got squeaky clean closets and a crazy sect of cannibalistic crickets on my hands. The ones that come out into the open to die are obviously wracked with guilt over their lifestyle or weak from spending so much time in hiding from the more aggressive ones. All of that is fine with me. If the crickets need to work out their demons in the middle of my dining room floor, I’ll give them space.

What I will not tolerate, however, is their new trick of lurking in the toilet. Another interesting bit in the ezine article was: “Crickets also need a good supply of water. However, keep the water away from the food to keep the food dry and fresh. Insert cotton swabs into the water vessel to prevent the crickets from drowning.” Clearly they are not good swimmers, so why would they choose the toilet as a new hang out? Three times in the past month I have found rather large crickets perched inside the toilet bowl. Each time I gasped, shuddered, and flushed them down because bugs are gross enough without rescuing them from places of questionable cleanliness (want to come visit me?). They put on rather a dramatic show as they circle the bowl, first fighting against the pull and then almost shrugging as their thin little legs start to swirl around them with the force of the water.

I guess bugs in the toilet would not prompt most people to write an essay. Unfortunately, my repeated encounters with the crickets have brought to the forefront of my mind a horrifying story that my friend John told me in college. Apparently, one afternoon when his mother was using the bathroom, a rat came up out of the toilet. He said after that day she always kept a teakettle full of water on top of the toilet lid, in case anything else ever tried to come in that way. Honestly, since this was a true incident (and if you saw how he gave a little laugh and shook his head and said “my poor mother” you’d believe him too) and not an urban legend, for the past 20 years I have been uneasy that such a thing could happen. (Not to mention all those news stories about snakes in the plumbing). More times than I care to admit, I have glanced down into the bowl and inspected the pipes behind it and wondered if a creature could make it into my bathroom. I think that fear is a main reason that I am so quickly in and out of the bathroom at bars and parties.

And so the crickets will not earn any sympathy from me. Maybe they are thirsty, maybe they are hiding from their cannibalistic friends, maybe they are just looking for a way to die. But as long as there is even the slightest possibility that something that would like to eat a cricket is lurking in my plumbing and looking for a reason to surface, the crickets will be destroyed quickly and without remorse.