The Number Field

This post doesn't have so much to do with Sunflower. This morning, I woke up pretty early to an unusually loud sound of crickets. Well, actually, it was just the unusually loud sound of cricket. In a bleary state, I wandered around the apartment a little bit, and noticed that the sound was coming from the bathroom. I turned on the light and walked in; the noise stopped. It started again a moment later, obviously coming from the bathtub. I looked into the tub, and it stopped again, but I didn't see a cricket. I thought to myself "I should turn on the water, and see what happens," but in my sleepy state, I failed to do that and headed back towards the bedroom. As I walked out, Jewel was sitting at the bathroom entrance with a funny expression on her face. She usually loves bugs, but she also hates the bathtub. The fear won out, as she must have thought that it was a trick to get her into the bathtub for a much-disliked bath. I went back to sleep.

A couple of hours later, Jenny was getting ready for work and turned on the bathtub faucet to let the water warm up before she got in. A minute later she called out my name in a sleepy-surprised voice. To her bewilderment, I excitedly called out "Is it the cricket?" and rushed in. The cricket that I should have taken care of earlier had in fact been hiding in the drain (probably the route it took into the apartment), and the water had forced it out of hiding. It looked more scary than the average cricket--sort of like the bad guys in A Bug's Live (although they were mostly grasshoppers).

I didn't want to be chasing a loose cricket all around the apartment, and I know that they can be fast little bugs, so I grabbed the toilet plunger. I was able to get it over the cricket before it knew what was coming, and then smash it convincingly.

Crickets can be a big problem here in Austin--we had major cricket issues at the University two summers ago, but this is our first apartment cricket. Let's hope it's also the last.