"Your days are numbered."

That's exactly what I keep telling the crickets as they go flying, leaping, jumping, whatever-it-is-they-do through the air, all the while making that click/click/clack sound. Totally unnerving. I think they fly blindly because I've seen them hit against the house, the garage doors, the porch railings-- don't they look before they leap?

My husband and I were having lunch out on the porch a couple of days ago, and a huge brown one click/clicked its way across the porch and landed on my husband's shirt, which made me jump out of my chair, which startled my husband because he didn't even realize the cricket was there. Luckily, when the cricket leaped away "from the crazy woman in the white rocker," it didn't land in our salads. (Did you buy different croutons? These don't have that garlic flavor.)

I have never seen so many crickets in my life. And they're in all sizes and colors-- small brown ones, medium-sized black ones, large brown ones with black lines going thru them, tiny beige ones, and big black ones with green racing stripes on their bodies-- that's what it looks like.... racing stripes. I am depending on the demise of the cricket population once we get our chickens. I hope we don't get picky eaters.... I expect those chickens to eat every insect on this property.

The other day when we were working on the chicken coop, a super-sized brown cricket with yellow legs landed on the ladder. He just sat there watching us, and you could see his body moving with each breath. The cricket just watched as my husband hammered in the steel hooks, and didn't even seem to flinch from the noise. Of course, I wouldn't go near the ladder, not even to hold it steady, as I had been doing every time my husband got up beyond the second step. "There's a cricket on that ladder. I can't touch it." --"So don't touch the cricket... just hold the ladder." "Sorry, but until that cricket goes away, you're on your own." "Husband falls off ladder and dies from fall because wife is afraid of a cricket..... that's what the headline on the news might be." --"Wife dies from fright as cricket lands on her face as she holds ladder for husband..... how about that headline for the news?"

When I walk out to the mailbox in the afternoon, I just keep my head down and try not to look up. It's bad enough that I can hear that click/click/clacking sound, but I don't need to actually see the crickets to know that they're jumping all around me. Now that we're getting close to having the chicken coop finished, I've been telling those crickets "Y'all have fun now because your days are numbered." When my husband heard me saying that out loud, his answer was "Now that you mention it, aren't our days numbered as well?" (Men take things so literally, I swear.)