Cricket Genocide Imminent

---

Photo by Orkhan Rzayev

Deceased - A cricket lies dead in the journalism lab.

   Last night I experienced a nightmare that crickets infested our campus. In this dream, I step into the MCB and crickets coat the floor. Some Crickets lie dead, some remain alive and others drag broken appendages barely hanging on to their mutilated bodies. One lone cricket lies on its back, the left leg twitching erratically.

   I look to the right. One pair mates as another pair duels to the death. The building smells like a bait shop, the putrid stench of cricket death. The chirps fill the hall, growing louder and more desperate by the millisecond. I fear for my life. I enter the cricket apocalypse unwittingly, yet somehow caught in the crossfire. 

   Okay, I did not dream crickets infested our campus. I wish “infested” suffices, but the past tense of the word deems it  untrue. The crickets rule the campus and humans are merely left to their own defenses.

     However, the incessant chirping leads me to believe I am losing my mind. The sound never relents. Monday night, in my Shakespeare class, I heard a louder than usual chirp and I panicked. I looked around, paranoid, knowing the crickets arrived to take me captive. The sound grew louder, louder then it stopped –a ring tone. I felt completely stupid, but relieved. 

   All this cricket commotion led me to consult the Web regarding extermination methods and general cricket information. Apparently the cricket gods blessed UAM with Field crickets, a common species known to invade the indoors and drive humans crazy during this exact time of year. According to critterridders.com , Field crickets “are serious agricultural pests” and eat almost anything. The folks at critterridders.com nailed that one. However, the author of the Web page also writes that none of the Field crickets “are able to survive and reproduce in buildings.” This person never visited Monticello in September.

   What can we do besides complain about the crickets? Not much. I read so many remedies and extermination methods, my head spun. The most practical method for our situation lies in keeping our campus clean and emptying trash receptacles. The rule about keeping food out of the classrooms makes sense now. 

   I suggest we stop stomping on the crickets and killing them. Killing three or four crickets will in no way make a dent in the already ridiculously large population. Stomping them accomplishes nothing except adding to the musty smell a cricket carcass leaves behind. Two other words come to mind: gut factor. Though tough to do, I say we live and let live. In a few weeks the temperature drops and nothing makes for a better cricket genocide than frost. In the meantime, all you fishermen out there go grab your cricket cages, your potato halves and go for it. Round up some crickets and enjoy the extra fishing time before winter arrives.