Let me just tell you that I despise crickets. I don’t know why, other than their tendency to hop amazing heights ….and they’re just gross! In fact, I have chills right now just thinking about how gross they are. Yes, I realize that they don’t bite or hurt anything and they don’t tend to be very big. And they sing nice songs at night (I’ll give ya that). I realize all that, but still—gross! And some fears are just not logical. Anyway, onto my story.
So this morning I was brushing my teeth, minding my own business, and I saw something wiggly on the floor. That’s not terribly unusual, so I just kept brushing. Then it seeped into my consciousness that the wiggly thing on the floor looked amazingly like a cricket. Upon further investigation, that’s exactly what it was. Its white underside was up, and it was obviously trying to flip itself over so it could (oh horrors!) hop around and torment me. I was paralyzed for a minute as I thought about how disgusting it was. I didn’t have shoes on, so had to find something else with which to crush the thing before depositing it into the toilet to be promptly flushed. The trash can had a rim around it, so chances are I wouldn’t crush it, and maybe it could stick to the bottom enough to flip over and hop. GROSS! I didn’t really want to use the lotion bottle that lives on the counter. And I couldn’t leave it to go get a shoe. What if it got away? So, I was obliged to use the garbage can. After a couple (unnecessarily powerful) “stomps” with the thing, the hideous little creature was no longer moving. Then I had to get it into the toilet. The toilet isn’t overly…umm…powerful, so I try to use minimal amounts of toilet paper….which meant that I could feel the thing through the thin layer of tissue. Sick. I freaked out a bit as it was on the way to the toilet, then couldn’t see it in the water—what if it had landed on the floor somewhere and would come back to haunt me? Deep breath. It was probably still in the paper. I looked around on the floor and didn’t see it, so I flushed the toilet and prayed that it was gone. And then shivered because it was so gross.
So now ya have it. I’m a wimp. Yes, I did move all the way to Africa by myself. And I live alone in a house that’s right next to the main gate on a well-traveled road. And none of the houses around me are occupied. And I don’t always have a guard around. And the only protection from a road on the backside is a very porous hedge. And ya know what? That stuff doesn’t scare me. I know that my protection doesn’t come from people anyway. God can protect me, and if I’m supposed to die here, so be it. I’m not afraid of all that. But this little dead cricket….that really did me in. Go figure.
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