Jumpin’ Jiminy

Jumpin’ Jiminy

Ah, Fall; a harvest moon time of year that spawns Halloween and bonfires and crickets.

I like crickets. They sing at night when the weather turns cool. They don’t sting, and they don’t bite. In fact, I grew up with one that was a personal friend of Pinocchio’s. He taught me how spell e-n-cyc-lo-pedia. But, when Fall rolls around, they tend to find their way into my house.

Now, they don’t bother me so much, but my girlfriend has a bug phobia. Crickets terrify her. Because ... they can jump.

“Bernie, there’s a cricket in the living room.”

“That’s nice, honey.”

“Will you get it?”

“I can’t right now, honey. I’m on the toilet.”

“Would you just hurry up and get it, please?”

I knew that she would be breaking out in hives soon, so I contracted the necessary muscles to halt my progress, removed myself from the throne, and fetched the little critter. As I walked to the door to toss him into the yard, she informed me that he would just find his way back in and that I should just flush him.

“Flush him? Down the toilet? The one that I just used? In some states that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Besides, it’s bad luck to kill a cricket.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like them.”

“Well, they probably don’t like you much either.”

Now, it wasn’t a real problem in the late Summer when it was just getting cool. A couple here and a couple there would find their way in and visit the kitchen or the den. I’d hear “eek!” and she’d materialize a moment later, pale and traumatized and wide-eyed. You’d think Freddie Kruger was after her.

But as it got cooler, the invasion began in earnest. There’d be colonies of three or four or five crawling and jumping around the floors and carpeting of the house. She would curl up in a fetal position on a kitchen stool that even the triathlon crickets couldn’t reach. She'd stay there, mumbling incoherently to herself, until I rounded them up and chucked them outside.

It was pitiful.

So, before we turned in for the night, she’d make me search the house from top to bottom hunting crickets. She knew they could reach her in the bed. It’s not as high as the stool.

“Did you get them all?”

“All that I could find.”

Wrong answer. She made me search the damn house again. I just wanted to go to bed. Do you know how hard it is to find a cricket if he doesn’t want to be found? Once, I even went outside with a flashlight and brought one in just so she could see me throw it out.

Finally, I managed to make it to bed. I was almost asleep.

“Hear that?”

“Hear what.”

...chirp - chirp…

“No. I don’t hear that.”

“Yes you do. Don’t lie to me. You gotta find it.”

"It's your imagination."

"No it's not."

"Well, it's outside then."

"No it's not!"

“But, honey, it’s almost one in the morning. I gotta go to work tomorrow.”

“Find it!”

As her eyes rolled back into her head and the spasms began, I decided looking for the cricket was easier than a trip to the emergency room. I pulled back the covers and headed for the kitchen. Determined to quell this incursion quickly, I broke out the Raid.

So here I am; crawling around the kitchen floor in my Fruit-of-The-Looms, on hands and knees, launching a chemical weapon attack against my childhood mentor. At one in the morning, I didn't care if he could spell.

Now, insecticide can be useful in most applications. But not this one. I had no idea there were so many crickets. They came from everywhere en masse. I soon deplete my ammunition. There were little cricket bodies strewn across a ceramic battlefield, upside-down with their little legs in the air, twitching and kicking and squirming, and still they came. They were like the Red Army, only brown. Hand-to-hand combat was all I had left. I began swatting and sweeping and slapping until my hands swelled to the size of a catcher's mitt. I was out numbered. I had to retreat. I needed to regroup. I employed a new tactic.

“Honey? Are you okay? What’s going on out there?”

“Shhhhhh! You'll give away my position!”

I grabbed a shoe. A mighty battle-axe. A war-club of righteousness. I charged back into the thick of it.

I don’t remember much after that. Just the beams of sunlight breaking through the half-open blinds on the kitchen door. As night became day, and with bloodlike sweat blurring my vision, I began to see the carnage I had wrought. All the little Jiminys, now just cannon fodder on a tile floor; a surface covered with little spiked legs and tiny antennae and cricket innards.

It was horrible.

I was exhausted, shell-shocked. Somehow, I dragged myself, inch by inch, to the safety of the bedroom. I pulled myself up and onto the bed with trembling, battle-weary hands. I began looking for my girlfriend, the maiden for whom I’d slain the dragon; my Florence Nightingale, tender of my wounds. The woman had the nerve to fall asleep. I felt my grip tighten on the shoe.


“Oh! Hi, honey," she said, rolling over and rubbing her eyes. "What are you doing up so early?”


...chirp - chirp…

***