Invasion of the Crickets

We are rapidly learning the joys of home ownership. Lights go out twice in one evening? Better find that fuse box, and call an electrician the next day. Water seeping into the basement? Better read up on sealing cracks. I miss the days of complaining about how slow the rental company's maintenance guys were.

Our latest problem? Crickets. I have always had vaguely positive associations with crickets. When I was younger, I subscribed to Cricket magazine, which had cheery comics featuring various insects. In Dickens' "Cricket on the Hearth," a character declares, "To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world." Tom has a program for his PDA that lets you determine the temperature by how fast the crickets are chirping. I always thought crickets made a beautiful summer sound. . . .

The first crickets we found in our new house had been dismembered, presumably by the cats. They weren't the friendly black crickets I knew from my childhood; instead, they were large and brown, what Tom calls spider-crickets and some people seem to call camelback crickets. As far as we can tell, crickets seem to be living in our basement, and possibly nesting in the crawl space under our bedroom. The basement isn't overrun by any means, but I see them just often enough to be jumpy while doing laundry. They also took up residence in the shed soon after we put it up.

Tom also thinks mole crickets are burrowing in our yard. Today he went to the local hardware store and came back with various traps and poisons, as well as a humorous mask to wear while spraying. (Since I mocked him for it, I've promised he gets to wear it in the event of chemical warfare.) We'll see how well it all works. I laughed at Tom, but I was just as happy not to have to poison anything.

It's almost bedtime, and I can hear the crickets chirping outside the window. I hope the crickets don't invade my dreams. . .or my bedroom.

Photo by Raphael Rousseau on flickr.com.