Happy as a Cricket

It's a sad fact: I can't handle crickets. The svelte-legged little critters make my skin crawl. Summer's here and they're marching en masse into my house.

Hairy Huntsmen spiders, sewer-dwelling roaches and beefy-looking beetles are a doddle to deal with in comparison to Jiminy cricket and his mates.

Last week an interloper came down the hallway settled on the grandfather clock and began a jam session with father time. I put an end to Jimmy and the Crickets informal musical event by throwing a tea towel in his direction.

This method was employed by my father who was a bit of a wuss when it came to removing an orthopteran from the house. Quivering at the thought of picking up the little blighter, a tea towel provided a buffer zone by enabling dad to bundle up Jiminy and set him free outside.

One has to work quickly in order for a catch and release to be successful. Armed with a handful of tea towels and a kitchen broom as backup, I lobbed a lump of linen at the bastardly bug and knocked him flat. With the cloth failing to cover him, he clicked into gear and powered up his hind quarters.

Back legs locked and loaded, he fired himself from the floor, flicked my right earlobe before landing under the dining room table. With another jump and simultaneous flap of his wings he crashed safely behind a side table.

Quivering and deciding it was all too hard, I retired for the night, with my tea towel.

At dawn, I found a carcass under the dining room table, but it was a cocky, not a cricket. Phew. In the far east and Europe it's considered bad luck to kill a cricket.

As day moved to night, a merry tune began to play, this time emanating from the kitchen. 'Crickey, the cricket's in the fridge,' I thought, only to discover from further sound recordings that he'd found his way into the walk-in cupboard beside the fridge.

During the next five evenings I conducted a door-to-door search of the cupboard with torch in hand. With my every movement, he would stop singing. It was next to impossible to spot him amongst all  the clobber.

I retreated, again, left the cupboard doors open and went to bed, with a tea towel.

Night six, silence. Jiminy had either vacated the cosy cupboard or finally dropped dead from starvation.

But later, on the same evening, while cooking up a stirfry and wondering what became of my long-legged lodger, something caught my eye to the left of the stove. "Jiminy, there you are," I said. Sitting atop a banana in the fruit bowl his chemosensory antennae were waving about in obvious anticipation of what was in the frypan. "Hungry?" I asked. "Jump right in," I suggested but then remembered his demise could hasten seven years of bad luck.

Luckily, the broom was close at hand and the fruit bowl was located right beside a window ledge. Trying not to quiver, I used the broom handle to push the window open and encouraged my freeloader to find another eatery. He did.

 With dinner done, I grabbed the broom and went to bed.