Crickets

A cricket mishap.

Crickets

Today I bought some crickets. Hmm, that's weird some would say. I would say sure, if you think crickets are weird. However, I, as a somewhat normal human being do not think crickets are weird. I find them kind of relaxing, like a beautiful song playing in the background of a nice relaxing day.... Anyway, I bought these crickets because I wanted to feed them to my turtle, also known as Turtle. I figured I'd take a few out every day and throw them into Turtles tank. Thaaats not exactly how it ended up working out.
I started my day like any other day, waking up late in the morning, thinking about what I would do. My waking hours started off pretty uneventful.Then, I had a brilliant idea. I would make a trip to Glenwood. I had noticed a few days prior to this one that I was running low on turtle food, you know, for Turtle. The decision was made, I would make the 30 minute drive and buy some more food.
When I got to Petco, I must have looked pretty lost or something, because the lady asked me if I needed help like three or four times. I was just looking at the different types of food for my turtle, even though I had already made up my mind which type I was going to buy. I picked out the pellets that Turtle has seemed to be enjoying over the past few months, and I was going to be on my way. For some reason though, I'm thinking because I was asked if I needed help so many times, I decided to keep walking around the store.Thats when it happened, I heard the crickets.
When I first walked over to the crickets, I didn't think much of them. They were all trapped in a tiny little plastic box, all making the famous cricket chirp. Having never thought of feeding crickets to Turtle, I imagined an awesome viewing of Turtle munching power. I examined one of the plastic boxes, and was satisfied to see that all the crickets inside were alive. I decided at that moment to buy them, and use them as food. Before I made it back to my house, I made a few other stops, not of much importance though.Well, besides me buying the very keyboard that I am now typing this story on. Anyways, once home, I decided to see how Turtle would like his new source of protein. I very carefully opened the plastic container, and tried to grab one of the little crickets. However I never realized how fast they were. Even being confined to a little box, they were somehow still escaping my grasp. It didn't help, that I was also kind of freaked out by them.
I finally was able to grab a couple and put them into the tank, the feeding was about to begin! Or was it? To my amazement these little b******s could swim. Not only could they swim, but they seemed to have some sort of advanced intelligence that I never saw coming. They were climbing out of the tank on my filter hoses before Turtle even noticed anything had been put into his tank. I don't know why, but I decided to try a different method. One that, now that I look back on, doesn't make much sense. I decided to open the plastic box, and just dump them all into the tank, hoping Turtle would notice, and start eating away. As I'm sure you guessed, that's not exactly what happened. As I said before, THEY COULD SWIM! The rest of them were also escaping via the filtration hoses just as the first two had. I didn't want to panic right away so I decided to watch what would happen. By watch what would happen, I mean walk away and tell my nieces and nephews that if they saw any small, jumping insects, to not be afraid, they're only crickets.
When I did finally make it back to the tank, to my surprise, most were still just floating on the surface. Turtle looking up at them from below, not showing much interest in them. There were a few, maybe two or three, that I know escaped for sure. Roaming around my room somewhere as I type this. For the rest of the crickets, I'm not sure what their fate will be. Hopefully, Turtle will realize that they are food and eat them. If not, I'm not sure how many others will find they're way up the filtration hose and out to safety, also known as my room.
I'm a little worried that they will find they're way onto my bed or something, but also curious. Hopefully when night finds its way back, those little escape artist crickets will sing their beautiful song of how they were trapped in a box, let out into a tank of water with some type of monster below, and how they were able to escape to safety. Now that would be a story that I'd like to hear.