Due to constant preventative spraying indoors and out, I haven't had a live cricket in the house for quite some time and for that I am grateful. Crickets and grasshoppers scare me more than spiders and spiders make me panic and holler for a spider killer. A cricket in the house sends me into a panic that mice can't compare to.
A few years ago I was the only one home one evening. Danny was out of town when I suddenly heard the creature chirping at the front door landing. The evil thing had given me no warning by coming up from the basement, he invited himself through a crack on the side of the front room door. He was not small and feisty, he was as fat and long as my thumb and determined to force his will upon me.
My can of poison was close to empty, so I emptied it on him. That really made him mad so up two stairs he came in the time it took me to grab my favorite Dove Extra Hold Hairspray. (It should be noted that this entire time I was screaming with random obscenities and prayers for help.) He made it up another step. Two to go and he'd have access to more places than I cared to think. As he began his march up the stairs I jumped back and dropped the hairspray. Prayers are answered. The can , in an uncanny slow-motion act, landed directly on the cricket. Not enough to kill him, but to inflict a concussion of sorts that gave me time to charge to the paper towels and unroll a hefty amount.
So there he still lay, twitching and gaining his senses.As he got his bearing I took my super wad and slammed it over him. I couldn't move; frozen in fear. If I lifted my hand he would surely jump right on me so I waited and waited. I sat on my butt at the top of the stairs and a vice-like grip on the paper towels suffocating the miserable, evil thing. After an eternity (you now, everything feels like an eternity when fear is involved) I moved my hands, swooped him up and ran to the bathroom.
Not taking a chance, I flushed first to make sure that when I dropped him in, it would suck him down the drain with no chance of swimming to shore. Victory. I marveled at his size as he plopped and was sucked down the drain. Down to the land of crocodiles and turtles, the abyss.
An hour or so later I calmed down enough to get ready for bed. I went in to the bathroom and as I was halfway to sitting down I heard an odd sound and looked to see the cricket. He had somehow resurfaced and was trying to climb out the sides of the toilet bowl!! I screamed, tripped on my pajama bottoms and fell into the towel rack. Scurrying to my knees I grabbed the toilet bowl brush and started whacking til he was stuck on the bristles, hanging on for his life. Eventually he fell back in and I flushed and flushed and flushed more than I can remember. He never came back.
The irony is that every evening I go to bed, I turn on my soft sounds for the night to Evening Crickets. In some inexplicable way, the sound of the crickets at a distance is soothing. Knowing I had fought the Mammoth and won, or knowing they are only in the machine. I don't know. But, the bugs that scare me most, give me comfort when I turn out the light. Go figure.
