A while back, Wil Wheaton wrote about the group of baby mantises (mantisis? mantisisess?) that hatched on his patio. I may have to revoke my girl card, but I've always been fascinated by bugs. In fact when I rented a small house in North Hollywood,, a family of crickets used to live in the light fixture above my bathtub. Every day I'd disrobe and slide the glass door open only to discover a passel of crickets trying to scale the sloping porcelain sides of the tub. They'd get about halfway up, slide back down, and then hop over to another side to try it yet again. I started keeping a plastic glass and a notecard to trap them with, stranding them under the cup and then gently sliding the notecard underneath, I'd make sure they were secure and then pad to the back door, where I'd release them into the backyard.
I was always naked, of course, because I'd never remember to do a cricket check until I was starkers. I wondered if the neighbors called me the crazy naked cricket lady. I didn't save all of the crickets - some of the babies were near impossible to trap (although I tried!) - but after a few months, I could reach in and pick up the crickets with my bare hands and release them into the wild.
While the crickets fell from the light in the ceiling, they never fell on me while I showered. My friends were disgusted but I sort of liked living in the the house that rained crickets. Occasionally they'd get into the house and I'd pad around silently, trying to intuit where the sound was so I could cricket-nap them and take them outside. The day that one fell into the heating grate in the floor was the worst, as I lived without heat for a full month afterward, not wanting to be responsible for cricket cremation.
Will and I were half-comatose on the couch last night watching TV when an ad for WALL-E came on.
We're not seeing that, I told him.
Why not?
Um, because I practically wept at the robot Superbowl Ad?
Good point.
Posted to counteract my previous jerkiness.
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More on the slackmistress + bugs: The Insect Messiah.
(note: if you're weirded out by spiders, don't click on this.)
