Our GIANT Cricket

This morning I woke up (which in itself was a miracle because I was up until all hours reading HUNGER GAMES--oh, my, a review is coming...) to a loud cricket chirping. I mean, LOUD. It sounded like a cricket the size of a dog. No kidding. So my husband follows the sound for a few minutes then becomes distracted by the morning paper and sports show he watches every day. The screeches are actually echoing through the downstairs hall. It's kind of creepy. I narrow the sound down to the living room. Now we have five fireplaces in our very old house, and trust me, the sound of critters is not a new or unfamiliar sound. But this one is very distinct and again, very LOUD. Soon all the kids are coming downstairs asking about this very loud cricket.

The loud Chirrups seem to be coming from the fireplace in the living room and it's time for me to start breakfast, so I abandon my plan to run off the cricket. It takes forever to get everyone at the table for breakfast because everyone's abuzz about this darn, and again may I say, VERY LOUD cricket. We all discuss how big he could be, how he got in, why there's only one, and when we first heard the sound this morning. We considered possible names and one of the kids remembered that it's bad luck to kill a cricket. The only reasonable possibility seemed to welcome him into the Koppelman family. Would a shoebox hold him? Or should we put him in the dog's cage?

Amazingly, I wasn't slated to drive carpool this morning, so I shuffled the kids out the door and cleaned the kitchen. This cricket seems louder than ever. Something about it is just wierd. I'm actually beginning to fear the attack of the giant cricket, the wrath of a creature so large and loud that it's only a matter of time before he attacks me with those screeching, bristly legs of his. I knew I could not stay in the house like this. Something had to give. And I certainly didn't have the nerve to call animal control about a cricket. So I put down the sponge and went into the living room to check things out again. I follow the sound and crawl down beneath a cloth-covered table near the fireplace. The sound is very loud under there but it's dark and takes me a minute for my eyes to adjust. My heart is beating about a hundred miles an hour. I think how ridiculous it is that I'm afraid of this stupid cricket, but it does sound HUGE.

Then I see it. The giant cricket. And I know one of the Koppelman kids must be chuckling his or her way through class today.

It's an old sound machine. We used to play ocean noises to one of the kids when he or she was a baby. Chris had the kids help him clean out the shed last night, and someone must have found it. I never even knew those darn sound machines had cricket noises! Who wants to listen to crickets? City people who think it's a peaceful sound? I was NOT peaceful through the sound of the cricket this morning, believe me. Anyway, the sound machine was all set up under the table, volume turned WAY up with giant cricket noises.

When I find out who did it, discreetly, of course, guess what's going in their bed tonight? You've got it. A giant cricket! Have a great Labor Day and thanks for reading. xox