Cricket Season or "Attack of the Crickets"

creepy. as soon as I just titled this entry, I heard a single chirping cricket in the next room. Yeah, so last night was attack of the cricket. We get various seasons here. Mysteriously there will be a flood of grasshoppers that come into our house one month, are in droves outside... and then 2 days later they all go away. Then another month we get flying insects, yesterday was the cricket. I guess we get a minature version of what they got in Egpyt with all those plagues.

I think the latest cricket caper is because we had a rain about a week ago, so I guess crickets are happy about that. Brook was a roll last night with his shoe and although I do not endorse stomping on crickets (they can't help it what they are and what they do), he seemed to feel better at contributing to the reduction of noise pollution in our house.

Now the Tambacounda cricket is much different than your ordinary cricket. These little buggers are loud! And I mean one Tambacounda cricket could easily hold its own to any other cricket in the world. CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP says the Tambacounda cricket. They come in under doors, they hop up the stairs and into our room. One cricket had a particularly cool sound.. it was cricket sound, but it was in stereo. It almost had an echo to it.. .or it sounded like he was in surround sound. We didn't find him.

Yeah so we go to bed and Brook is determined to get every last lingering cricket out of our bedroom... I look up from my book as he says, ... .did you hear that?! where is that one coming from? "I don't know" I say disinterested. He says yeah, you'll be waking me up when that cricket wakes you up with its chirping. I listen to the faint chirping from somewhere in the room. Nah I say. that's not a 'real' Tambacounda cricket. A real Tambacounda cricket would be very silent right now and wait until all the lights were out. Then and only then would the Tambacounda cricket start to chirp really loudly. This faint cricket sound was not impressive.

Brook is pulling all the furniture away from the walls in our room, walking on the bed and taking a stick and tapping the tapestries on our walls to find the stray crickets. I finish another chapter of my book. I can't find them he says exasperated. I become philosphical. Just think I say, soon we won't have a flood of crickets coming into our house in droves... Yeah, well I don't want them here now either he says. He decides to go outside on the balcony and see if that is where the crickets are. He comes back. You won't believe how many crickets there are out there. Oh yeah? I say. He takes our insect repellent and starts spraying and comes back. I tell him that "off" won't kill the bugs. But he says Yeah but they don't like it. I tell him where the bug spray is. He goes down and comes back and outside does a wild cricket spraying campaign. I feel bad for the crickets. But at the same time, it is quiet now. Brook comes back, mission accomplished. We had a hearty and fitful, cricket-free sleep.