Day Two Hundred Eighty One

Oh Mein Gott in Himmel! Es Gibt Uberall Krickets!

The translation for the title is, "Oh My God in Heaven! There are crickets everywhere!" I seem to fall back into the German I heard family members yell whenever I am hysterical. Oddly enough, the other German word for cricket is grillen, which also means barbecue. Uh huh. But I am getting off topic.

Hello? 911? I have a cricket emergency here!

Yes, Copper has been here less than twenty four hours and we have already had a cricket unglück (calamity). I'll let you guess which kitty is the responsible party.



What?

My son brought Copper, the Bearded Dragon, here yesterday for several reasons which I detailed in my last entry. He walked in and set the aquarium on the counter and I proceeded to greet Copper in the sing-songy voice I reserve for all things cute and small - or cute and large - okay cute of any size. Anyway, I think Copper is a girl so will be referring to her as such hence forth. So, she perked up and turned her head from side to side like she recognized my voice. I then picked her up and she settled into my hand. I was thrilled.

After he got the aquarium all cleaned and set up - and I have to say - they've been taking very good care of Copper because she was very alert and has even grown a lot, he showed me the new system for feeding and watering the crickets. (Dang. I had forgotten about those things.) He was going to go get some more but I assured him I needed to make a pet supply run and would take care of it. I took the cricket keeper with me to the pet store and had them fill it with 50 large crickets. Remember that number.  

The only crickets left in here are dead ones.

All evening, thanks in no small part to the newly refilled Ssscat canister which was strategically placed on the shelf in front of the aquarium, the cats stayed away. Since there is only a low wattage warming light on through the night I wasn't too worried about anybody getting their whiskers singed if they ignored the air blast and tried to climb on top of the aquarium. Oh, and I put the crickets in a spare bathroom with the door closed.

All seemed well when I got up. The cats' whiskers were all okay and nobody was limping from a burned paw. Copper seemed fine. I set about doing my morning zoo chores. I was happily taking care of all things lizard and may have even been whistling a tune when I went out to the kitchen to refill her water bowl. I was gone no more than ten seconds.

Now, I am so used to odd sounds I guess I didn't notice the cricket keeper "falling" off the shelf onto the tile floor. Cats are surprisingly quiet when they want to be. Like when they've knocked over a cricket keeper containing approximately fifty crickets whose major goal in life is to not be "kept."

Needless to say, I quit whistling, which is hard to do anyway when your jaw has dropped to the floor, as I took in the scene. Everywhere I looked there were crickets hopping and cats chasing them. Plus, there were lots of crickets waiting in line for their turn to jump out of the box. It was bedlam.

Disney deceived us. Crickets create problems.
They are not adorable problem solvers.

I did not know what to do first. Now, I know crickets are on a reptile's diet, but what if they're toxic to cats?! I looked around and felt like Pandora desperately wanting to close the box while simultaneously chasing down the menace that escaped from it!

I was grabbing crickets with my bare hands; stuffing them under the fallen lid; searching for something to cover the top of the cage; deciding on a picture frame for that purpose; yelling at the cats that catching was good, eating was not; running for paper to slide under the lid (which was completely useless.) That was when I ran back to the pantry and ripped open a box of cat food desperately searching for the piece of cardboard they use between layers of cans. I was finally feeling like I could get a handle on this!

No joke. This is what it felt like. It's a
good thing I do not own a flame thrower.

As I ran back to the scene of the carnage, I saw Boo! had flipped the lid, enabling the crickets I had caught to escape. I was on my knees, pulling back cats with both hands and wishing my feet were hands. Whenever I snatched a cricket away from a cat, if it was even half alive, I fed it to Copper. Lizards won't eat dead crickets. Imagine that.

Crickets are like roaches with knees. Seriously, if you removed their legs, you would have a roach. They also have gooey innards. And they can cover a vast territory in seconds flat. There were/are crickets in the family room, front bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen and I'm praying not in our bedroom.

Little Miss Boo! was responsible for this fiasco and just so happened to be the most entertained by it! She had so much fun catching them and proudly bringing them to me it almost made the craziness worthwhile.

What am I saying? No it didn't! My body is not happy about crawling around on the floor, looking under furniture and diving for hopping bugs. The creep factor was off the charts. It wasn't even 9 a.m. and I felt like I had run a marathon. Believe it or not, and maybe for the best, Jack and Rooney were sound asleep on the couch; oblivious to the chaos all around them.

I will be so glad when this cricket thing is over. I've been told, when a Beardie is about a year old, they are considered an adult and do not need to eat live crickets anymore. What do I know? When I bought her she was six months old. That was a month ago. So by my calculations, I have five more months of cricket duty. Trust me. July 1 is my goal. I may even have a grillen...