“This was a conundrum. There was no immediate way for me to transfer 250 clearly active and ravenously hungry crickets from the box to the shallow plastic container we store them in at home. The only solution would be to grab a spare fish tank we had out in the shed, which would take a bit of time, requiring a trip outside in the deep snow and chilling cold. Back at my desk, after all, I had a nearly finished story that was due to my editor. Rather than upend my workday for the sake of $11.50 worth of Internet crickets, I decided to retape the box and store it in a secure location until I had time to deal with it”
“Besides my wife, Briana, and I, our house is home to 5-year-old twins, a 1-year-old, three large cats, one beagle-basset mix and one lizard. There was only one place where I thought I could put the cricket box without it getting overturned or split open by a child or an animal: the bathroom adjacent to our kitchen. I put the crickets in the cabinet above the toilet and went back to work. For about 20 minutes, everything was quiet”
“Our dragon, whom we named Holly, eats a lot, and the thing she loves to eat most is crickets (typically about 10 a day, in addition to other things like mealworms and vegetables). Briana later told me that she first realized something was terribly wrong when one of the cats suddenly leaped on to a pumpkin pie that had been warming on the countertop. It was going after an unusually large cricket that was munching the filling. I’m happy to report that as of Saturday afternoon, I am alive. The lizard is well-fed. The cats are sleeping deeply. The Ingraham household is finally still. But something’s chirping in the bathroom”
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