Night of the Not-So-Living Crickets

A few weekends ago, I opened my apartment door to do laundry. This is not unusual. What was unusual was that about seven steps from my door (which is on the second floor), I encountered an orgy of death.

Let me take a moment to point out that before the morning in question, I had seen a cricket inside my apartment complex once. It was alive, right next to the front door, and delighted when I let it outside. That is the extent of the cricket problem in my building.

And yet on this particular morning, the mangled remains of about twenty crickets lay tangled and strewn across the carpeting ten feet from my door, ending only at the top of the staircase leading down. I retreated briefly to my apartment to get some shoes. An armful of laundry has a way of obscuring the gory aftermath of what appeared to be a full tournament of cricket “Mortal Combat.”

As I reached the landing of the staircase (steps punctuated by the occasional crunch of a weakened exoskeleton) I looked down only to discover added carnage. Clinging to the vertical folds in the carpeting, strewn carelessly across the horizontal steps, and clinging while-in-death to the cliffs defining the borders of the two, perhaps fifty more crickets had reached the ends of their mortal sufferings.

Somewhat baffled, yet ever-persistent, I pushed forward. The washer and dryer were but a few steps from the foot of those stairs. Naturally, I arrived at these utilities only to encounter further carnage. The entire first floor hallway was spotted with what appeared to be the end result of a cricket/paper shredder orgy. I took care of the laundry, then pushed forward down the corridor, out of sheer morbid curiosity. Sure enough, crickets lay strewn about the entire hallway, turned the corner to the staircase leading to my door, then stopped halfway up.

Allow me to draw a picture then, of the layout and what I describe here:


Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall
_____________________________________________________________________
(2nd Floor)
Dead Crickets Dead Crick… …Dead Crickets
Dead Crickets Dead Crick… …Dead Crickets
Dead Crickets Dead Crick… My Door …Dead Crickets
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Laundry Machines Dead Cr
Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets Dead Crickets
(1st Floor)
___________________________________________________________________
Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall Wall

Now I’m not saying that I DEFINITELY have the power to ward off invading armies of zombie crickets with my aura alone. I’m just saying that the mangled corpses of about 600 of them made it look that way.

I have no explanation to account for why there were 600 dead crickets in my building that morning. I have no idea what killed them so enthusiastically. I don’t know who cleaned them up the following Monday (though I have a good guess on that one).

All I know is that it looked like an invisible force field circling my door kept the invading armies at bay.

I don’t know what else it can ward off, but I think I like it there.