Bugs and Books

Friday Sugar seemed overly interested in a cardboard box. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer (Tatum’s influence certainly hasn’t helped, either) I did not question the blank staring for a while. But then I noticed she was uninterested in the heating pad that I turned on.

Sugar?

Not interested in rotisserie-ing herself at every opportunity? Something must be up. So I blithely picked up the box to see what the fuss was about. A cricket proceeded to drop out and land with a *THUD* right next to my foot.

AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

From Jiminy Cricket to Mulan, Disney has long-fostered a love for crickets in my little heart. They are wholesome and helpful and good luck charms and often sing catchy little tunes in bitty little hats. Who does not love an opportunity for bitty little hats? What those perverse imagineers forgot to mention, though, is that those bugs are FUCKING ENORMOUS and also very BLACK AND SCARY.

So I stood there, horrified, as Sugar proceeded to maim our little home's creepy good luck charm. I finally tore off a bit of toilet paper and scooped up the very large and heavy insect and squealed all the way down the stairs as I carried him outside, sure that he was probably a very venomous cricket and was about to sting and bite and maim me in retribution for my idiotic cat through the very flimsy bit of tissue that separated his bulky exoskeleton from my delicate little fingers.

I flung him out the door perhaps less gently than I could have, but you have to understand I had worked myself into quite a frenzy at that point. He landed with a loud cracking sound on the pavement, and I did not wait to see if he was smushed. I just slammed the door quickly, lest the dizzy, injured bug find made a superheroic effort to squirm its way quickly back into my house.

Happily he was gone by the time I went for a run, so I am assuming he was able to hop off, perhaps into my rose bush, to at least get away from us crazies and go on to lead a very happy, if hatless, life.

Equally exciting but less fun to write about, I found my book! The one that I thought disappeared months ago! I know you must have been wasting away in anguish not knowing where its whereabouts, as I was. We can all sleep better tonight. Phew.