PLAGUE OF THE CRICKETS

Date: January.

Outside temperature: -20 degrees centigrade.

Time: Around 8pm. Dinner time as usual. My doorbell rings. It's a tenant.


Tenant : We're finding crickets.

Me : What? Inside?

Tenant : Yup. Ten of them today.

Me : That's weird. It's January.

Tenant : They make noise. At night when we turn the lights off. And they jump when we try to catch them.

Me : That's a problem.

So the inquest begins. A visit to the other tenant in the same building reveals a lizard and two snakes in an aquarium. Reptiles eat crickets.

Me to the lizard tenant : Did any crickets escape?

Lizard tenant : No. The snakes don't eat crickets. But we unwrapped a sleeping bag. We think a cricket must have been trapped in there from summer.

Heard through the floorboards : Downstairs tenant screaming. Stomping. Probably a cricket being stamped
to death.
                                                                             http://www.exterminationmont-royalinc.com/

I caught one. Careful not to crush it, I put the cricket into a pill container from the pharmacy. The next day I went to see Willy the exterminator. I dropped the dead insect onto Wellie's glass bug-display case which is also his counter.

Me : What is this?

Wellie : A cricket.

Me : What's it doing in one of my buildings?
                 
Wellie : It's from the pet store. This one's genetically modified. See? No wings.

Me : So there's no way this came out of a sleeping bag?

Wellie : It's -20 outside. This thing escaped. How many are you finding?

Me : Thirty so far.

Wellie : That's a problem. They're reproducing somewhere. In a crawl space or something.

Me : Crap. How do I kill them?

Wellie : Sticky pads. Around the baseboards.

I left with a hundred sticky pads. It took two weeks and a lot of sticking, screaming and stomping to get rid of the crickets. The sticky pads were very sticky. They stuck to shoes, socks, baseboards, sofa legs, and a tenant's pet rat.

Total bill : 65$ worth of sticky pads.
Total time required to get rid of the crickets : 2 weeks.
Total damages : psychological. To the affected tenants.
Outcome: No more crickets.


I could never prove where the crickets came from. The lizard tenant never admitted to releasing them. But my suspicions went into my little black book. It wouldn't be the last time I tangled with the lizard tenant.