Cricket Keeping

We had a "cricket incident' in our house yesterday.  (That's what M referred to it as when Aunt called and I was unavailable for the phone.)  I didn't blog it because I didn't have a photo, but now I do.

Yes, I know those aren't crickets.  But the picture does include son, L and his love for "animals".  The picture was of L cleaning the cockroach cage at his volunteer job at the pet shop.  Why would anyone have a "cockroach cage'????

Back to the cricket incident.....A few nights ago as we were returning home LATE, L declared his gecko hadn't eaten in days, but he had been asking and asking to go get food.  Really?  One of L's strongest character traits is persistence so I don't think the ONE time I remember him casually mentioning it as "asking and asking".  Since his pet store was closed, I took him to the other (late remember), but we had a dilemma - the small crickets were almost microscopic and the large ones were way too large (they aren't supposed to be bigger than the space between the gecko's eyes).

However, there was one bag of prebagged crickets (who woulda thought?) that were the right size.  That's what L got and only put a few in the cage.  No more problems, right?

Except when we went to get mealworms (what we really wanted as gecko food) L forgot his money.  Except when we got home from soccer practice there was a loose cricket on the wall in the hallway.  Except for the cricket bag had a small leak.

I told L to put the rest of the crickets in the gecko cage.  I had no idea there were so many! So - I had L get out as many as he could and put them in the cricket keeper.  This was the first time in five years that it was actually used to keep crickets!

Now for the incident that M referred to - L was already in bed when I could hear the cricket that was still in the hallway.  I told him that if it woke me up during the night that his name would be mud.  "What's that mean?",  he asked.  I ran to grab my camera to take a picture in the hallway and L bounded out of bed and grabbed the cricket that was closer to the ground now.  I called out for him to take it outside ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE STREET.  He made it half way across the yard, dropped the cricket off and ran back inside! He had bare feet and no shirt!

Now it's Friday night and one of the crickets that was still in the gecko cage was being extremely noisy.  Even L finally had enough and caught it and put it outside.  That brings our grand total to 2 frozen crickets, a few still in the gecko cage, an unknown amount eaten by B - the gecko, and about 15 STILL in the cricket keeper.  Once those 15 are gone, there will be no more cricket keeping!