We had a couple fat bullfrogs in our goldfish pond, and I had been tossing them mealworms for snacks. I was buying mealworms from an outfit called Fluker Farms and saw that they also sold live crickets. No doubt that my frogs would like a couple fat, juicy crickets for snacks, so I ordered a box of 100 from Fluker. They arrived in two days and were secured in a heavy corrugated box with wire sides.
I put the box in the refrigerator to calm down the lively crickets who acted like they were in speed. Crickets can get quite lively at room temperatures.
Later, I decided not to take the whole box out with each feeding and got out a small plastic container, thinking I would put a half dozen or so crickets in the smaller container and take that to the pond at feeding time. I put the big cricket box on the counter, but when I opened the top, all hell broke loose. Crickets went everywhere, quickly leaping, as they do, out of the box and scattering in all parts of the kitchen and dining room. The last thing I needed was for Nancy to come home and find 100 crickets patrolling our house, so the chase was on. I caught a few on the kitchen counters and quickly put them in the tall kitchen trash can where they could not escape. The ones on the floor were more difficult targets, I’d catch three and two would get away. I finally got out a broom and swept what I could in a pile, then threw a dish towel over the lot, getting a few in the trash can while the others hauled ass. It was chaos of the first magnitude.
At last, I finally captured all the visible crickets, but many escaped beneath the refrigerator and the dining room cabinets. Being unable to get the crickets back in the original carton, I took the trash can of perhaps 70 or 80 crickets and dumped them in the pond. They were so fast, even the frogs couldn’t catch them.
I decided not to tell my wife about the cricket catastrophe and hoped they would stay in hiding for a while,
That night as we tucked in bed, Navy said, “The crickets are sure noisy tonight! It almost sounds like they are in the house.”
I have not bought a crate of live crickets since then.
