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Man Accidentally Unleashes 250 Crickets In His House And People Are In Tears With Laughter
When I was a child growing up in rural Australia, there was one summer that was particularly memorable. A biblical plague of insects took over our small town, at one stage swarming so busily that a single air-swipe with a tennis racket left the strings oozing with smelly cricket carcasses. My friend and I would catch as many as we could and feed them to the blue-tongued lizards living around our houses, hoping that if we fed them enough we could make them grow into Godzilla-like creatures that we could take to school and scare our classmates with.
Sadly, they simply got fat and lazy. But boy did they love eating those crickets! So when Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham and his family adopted a young bearded dragon lizard recently, the first thing he did was make a bulk order for live crickets. The crickets soon arrived by FedEx, and a mixture of Christopher’s naivety and inexperience combined to unleash his own personal plague on the family house, leaving his wife in despair and his Twitter followers in tears of laughter. Scroll down below to read the chaotic cricket catastrophe below, and let us know what you think in the comments!
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Image credits: jalexartis
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
“This was a conundrum. There was no immediate way for me to transfer 250 clearly active and ravenously hungry crickets from the box to the shallow plastic container we store them in at home. The only solution would be to grab a spare fish tank we had out in the shed, which would take a bit of time, requiring a trip outside in the deep snow and chilling cold. Back at my desk, after all, I had a nearly finished story that was due to my editor. Rather than upend my workday for the sake of $11.50 worth of Internet crickets, I decided to retape the box and store it in a secure location until I had time to deal with it”
Image credits: _cingraham
“Besides my wife, Briana, and I, our house is home to 5-year-old twins, a 1-year-old, three large cats, one beagle-basset mix and one lizard. There was only one place where I thought I could put the cricket box without it getting overturned or split open by a child or an animal: the bathroom adjacent to our kitchen. I put the crickets in the cabinet above the toilet and went back to work. For about 20 minutes, everything was quiet”
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: fotologic
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: _cingraham
Image credits: Christopher Ingraham
“Our dragon, whom we named Holly, eats a lot, and the thing she loves to eat most is crickets (typically about 10 a day, in addition to other things like mealworms and vegetables). Briana later told me that she first realized something was terribly wrong when one of the cats suddenly leaped on to a pumpkin pie that had been warming on the countertop. It was going after an unusually large cricket that was munching the filling. I’m happy to report that as of Saturday afternoon, I am alive. The lizard is well-fed. The cats are sleeping deeply. The Ingraham household is finally still. But something’s chirping in the bathroom”
People loved the story:
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Here’s what people had to say about the hilarious incident
What do you think ?
diane a 7 years ago (edited)
I have a similar cricket related tale. We kept a tarantula, who lived on the things. We had a secure container of crickets. However, when going on holiday for a week we thought it was kindest to let them loose outside rather than leaving them to starve, assuming they wouldnt survive the cool evenings - wrongly. We returned to find there had been an unexpected heatwave and the crickets had thrived and multiplied, infesting a dozen or so adjacent gardens.they were driving the neighbours mad with the noise at night (Crickets are not native in the UK). We kept very quiet as to where this unnatural plague had come from.
Xiaolaohu 7 years ago
Fast forward ten years to documentaries about the deforestation of Britain and construction of cricket proof fence, like Australian rabbit fence or they bring in lizard predators that adapt to "island life" mutate, become Godzilla size and attack buckingham palace. Meanwhile, you all just keep whistling and looking the other way!
Load More Replies...
Laugh Fan 7 years ago
I say - I don't like cricket oh no... I love it. Nice one Chris Pitch!
Load More Replies... 
Laura Bauer 7 years ago (edited)
my horrible cricket story - had a box of a thousand that I emptied into a large garbage can. This has always worked - until I got a new cat. When I wasn't looking, said cat jumped up on the garbage, knocking it over. I heard the crash, but by the time I got to the can, about half of them had gotten out. I lived in a very old apartment which had odd little holes in the corners of the closets. The can was near the hall closet, so most of them headed in their since it was dark. I don't know how many escaped into the holes, but the neighbors flipped. Of course I didn't mention that I had 6 lizards, and a dozen frogs, and played dumb when the rental office started phoning around asking who had lizards. We were finding crickets for months.
diane a 7 years ago (edited)
Oh dear - nightmare to find the damm things . luckily it went cool round our area a couple of weeks later and they shut up
Load More Replies...
Alexandru Bucur 7 years ago
Ah yes. Reminds me of when I was a kid and spent a whole day at my grandma's catching roughly 30 grasshoppers, intending to keep them as pets. I go back in for dinner and leave the grasshopper box in my room. Somewhat later, while I'm watching cartoons on tv, my grandma starts yelling. Apparently, I had forgotten to close the lid properly... Also, my dad did exactly the same thing to his grandma when he was little, only with a box of snails...
Mark Gollihur 7 years ago
Moisten cloth towels, and wring them out. Roll them up loosely and lay them against the baseboards in the rooms where you know crickets are, leave them overnight. In the morning, the crickets will be under the towels.
diane a 7 years ago (edited)
I have a similar cricket related tale. We kept a tarantula, who lived on the things. We had a secure container of crickets. However, when going on holiday for a week we thought it was kindest to let them loose outside rather than leaving them to starve, assuming they wouldnt survive the cool evenings - wrongly. We returned to find there had been an unexpected heatwave and the crickets had thrived and multiplied, infesting a dozen or so adjacent gardens.they were driving the neighbours mad with the noise at night (Crickets are not native in the UK). We kept very quiet as to where this unnatural plague had come from.
Xiaolaohu 7 years ago
Fast forward ten years to documentaries about the deforestation of Britain and construction of cricket proof fence, like Australian rabbit fence or they bring in lizard predators that adapt to "island life" mutate, become Godzilla size and attack buckingham palace. Meanwhile, you all just keep whistling and looking the other way!
Load More Replies... Laugh Fan 7 years ago
I say - I don't like cricket oh no... I love it. Nice one Chris Pitch!
Load More Replies... Laura Bauer 7 years ago (edited)
my horrible cricket story - had a box of a thousand that I emptied into a large garbage can. This has always worked - until I got a new cat. When I wasn't looking, said cat jumped up on the garbage, knocking it over. I heard the crash, but by the time I got to the can, about half of them had gotten out. I lived in a very old apartment which had odd little holes in the corners of the closets. The can was near the hall closet, so most of them headed in their since it was dark. I don't know how many escaped into the holes, but the neighbors flipped. Of course I didn't mention that I had 6 lizards, and a dozen frogs, and played dumb when the rental office started phoning around asking who had lizards. We were finding crickets for months.
diane a 7 years ago (edited)
Oh dear - nightmare to find the damm things . luckily it went cool round our area a couple of weeks later and they shut up
Load More Replies... Alexandru Bucur 7 years ago
Ah yes. Reminds me of when I was a kid and spent a whole day at my grandma's catching roughly 30 grasshoppers, intending to keep them as pets. I go back in for dinner and leave the grasshopper box in my room. Somewhat later, while I'm watching cartoons on tv, my grandma starts yelling. Apparently, I had forgotten to close the lid properly... Also, my dad did exactly the same thing to his grandma when he was little, only with a box of snails...
Mark Gollihur 7 years ago
Moisten cloth towels, and wring them out. Roll them up loosely and lay them against the baseboards in the rooms where you know crickets are, leave them overnight. In the morning, the crickets will be under the towels.
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