Been awhile, I know...all kinds of stupidity happening over the last few weeks, and to be honest, I cringed at the thought of reliving it. I have the feeling January will always be a crummy month for me, now. Mom died in January last year, so I think everything will be colored by that. Two of my three dogs ran off last week, but only one of them returned. Lucy, the one I fully expected to come home, did not, but Stella, the one that had never done it before did. She was gone 3 days and then found her way home. Since Lucy hasn't been reported as needing to be picked up (either alive or dead) I can only assume she is with someone. She's an awesome Lab, so I can understand why anyone would want her...
The snow hasn't quite finished with us - we got another 8 inches dumped on us last Friday, and now we have giant icebergs on the street corners again. The city used to haul the scraped up snow in the business district off to parts unseen, but they haven't done it at all this year. I'm thinking they didn't do it last year either. I am noticing big holes in the streets where the plows have torn up the bricks. I may have mentioned this once before, but our downtown area has brick streets. I'm not sure how many miles, but most of the paved roads have bricks underneath. Visitors thing they are so wonderful - try driving over them in a truck 8 1/2 months pregnant and we'll see if they still think they are wonderful. Having said that, they do possess a certain charm. When properly maintained, of course...
Last night on the way home from work, I went by the pet store and bought 4 dozen crickets. We were down to about 4, so it couldn't wait. Skittles eats twice a day, and there wouldn't be any for the morning. Normally they aren't a problem, but occasionally you get a noisy one. There was one in this batch that was chirping pretty loud. I had put the boys to bed early because I'm having trouble getting them up in the morning - well, not Tucker - he's Mr. Rise and Shine At The Crack Of Dawn - so, I thought ok, get the crickets out of there so he has no excuse to stay awake. I'm carrying the plastic container by the handles and I get all the way into the living room, almost to the exact spot I'm going to put them, and the bottom falls off. Four dozen crickets in my living room...they're going everywhere, in all directions, and I'm hollering for the boys to come help me (Bobby is at the church doing whatever deacons do, lol). I couldn't get either one of them to touch any of the crickets, so I had to round them up by myself. I tried picking them up by hand, but it seemed like they were getting squished - if you don't grab them kinda tight, they squirm out of your hand - so I grabbed a container and a lid to shoo them into. With the boys as spotters, I got most of them rounded up and then Bobby came home and helped me get the last three - that we knew of, lol. I didn't count them. So much for going to bed early.
At the time I wondered how many of them would die from shock over the trauma they had just endured. This morning I discovered only about 3 actual dead, some severely wounded, but several that appeared to be dazed. Possibly due to freedom being within their grasp only to be cruelly yanked away?? Who knows, but they looked like a train wreck. You had the walking wounded; missing a leg, but otherwise moving about as if they didn't know it was missing, those that didn't appear to be injured in anyway, but totally nonfunctional, and then the others. They were the obviously and grotesquely damaged of the lot. Back legs now in the front going the wrong way, feelers bent, wings missing - carnage! Needless to say, Miss Skittles had several more crickets for breakfast than she normally would have gotten. Saved them from a long drawn out death. Now the question was: How many survivors would I find when I got home? Who knows? They aren't the smartest insects, I've discovered. They will happily drown themselves if they have access to water deeper than their own body, for example, so it's conceivable that they might get trapped under or around something and die. They've done that before on a good day with their orange slices...
I was happy to discover there had been no more deaths, and they all must have recovered from their shock, because they seemed pretty chipper. In fact, I think I heard chirping...
