Spider Crickets
This was back when we moved from 500 square feet in Burbank to 950 in Northern Virginia, which we called “outside D.C.” because it was less embarrassing to drive 3,000 miles with our books, records, and dishes in the hatchback if our destination was the nation’s capital.
In the dark, we turned the key to our new mansion and heard them: tip, tap, tip tip tap tap. Chris crossed the combo living/dining room, flipped the light switch and there they were, springing from the floor like charmless fireworks, popping and ticking with every launch and landing, hundreds of them. We’d blown my signing bonus on a house from a horror movie.
Out front, I Googled in the moonlight while Chris did some shooing and stomping and swearing and regretting inside.
The pest control website said: “At just around an inch in length (not including their legs) these pests are small but mighty, giving a ‘pop’ sound when they jump around. These pests sometimes make their way into people’s homes, surprising them with their massive leaps and jumps when spooked.”
The exterminator in my new neighborhood didn’t hire a writer. They went with a writerbot. Small but mighty made me sure of it. My own writing had made massive leaps and jumps out in Los Angeles, but a Corporation offered me down-payment money to move in with millions of massively leaping rhaphidophoridae, dress stressfully close to the business end of the business-casual spectrum, and confine my writing to whiteboards and PPT decks.
“What does it say!?” Chris cried from the front-lines of infestation.
“Spider crickets!”
“That doesn’t sound real!”
“Are you surprised!?”
“Yes!”
“Do they seemed spooked by you!?”
“Yes!”
“That’s them!”
We went to a hotel. We hired a guy and never saw the spider crickets again. I still write, but those years of making the low end of American Dream money cost me a portion of my spirit I’ll never buy back.
It’s alright. I learned a few things. You gotta include the leg length. The legs are longer than the body, which is important to the story.
We also have these! Their erratic jumping gave me heart palpitations. Then I got a cat, and now I find their torsos separated from their legs in corners of the basement. I kind of miss them now!
Cave crickets! They rule our cellar, and I’ve come to think of them affectionately as my little “lords-a-leaping.” I will love to now think of them as “charmless fireworks” — though I actually am quite charmed by them. Their lanky bodies and fearfulness and exaggerated prancing are so endearing (now that I’ve spelled that out, it’s clear I see myself in them 😆).
P.S. Dying over those last lines! Such surprise and rhythm and metaphor. Going go be running through my head for a while. “The legs are longer than the bodies…”