The best pet care story I've read...

[brooklynite]

Link to tweet

They were in a cardboard box. And I cut the tape and opened the box and SURPRISE! Crickets everywhere. It was the middle of the workday and I didn't have time to deal with cricket logistics, so I put the tape back on the box.

And then I put the box in the upstairs bathroom, the only semi-contained place in the house where I knew the kids and the cats and the dogs wouldn't be able to get at the box and tear it open and unleash 250 hungry crickets into our warm, semi-humid environment.

About 20 minutes later I'm back at work on my computer, and I hear my wife in the kitchen: "where are these goddamn crickets coming from." I freely admit I had not kept her fully up-to-date on my cricket purchasing plans.

And at first I was like "okay, maybe one or two got out when I initially opened the box. No biggie." I kept working.

With the benefit of hindsight, this was a mistake.

I'm trying to wrap up a story but I keep hearing cricket-related exclamations coming from the kitchen. Eventually I get up to investigate. I say, "So uh the crickets got here toda--"
"I REALIZE THAT," she says. "WHY ARE THEY ALL OVER THE KITCHEN"

I say "That's a good question. Let me check something." I walk over to the bathroom. I open the door. There are crickets. Everywhere.

Crickets on the floor. Crickets on the walls. Crickets in the sink. Crickets in the toilet.

For some reason my first instinct is to flush the toilet, as if that will do anything to solve the problem of crickets in all the other places that were not the toilet. I shut the door. "Uh, don't come in here!" I try to sound cheerful.

Apparently I had not sealed the box shut as well as I should have. I ended up rushing out to the shed, in the 18" of snow and below zero temperatures, to pick up a spare aquarium we had. I spent about 45 minutes collecting crickets from the bathroom.

Of course by this point many had migrated elsewhere. They were in the closet. In the shoes. Making their way downstairs to the playroom. The cats were having what I can only imagine was the greatest day of their lives.

I tried to collect all of them. It was like the world's shittiest game of Pokemon. But here we are, roughly 10 hours after the initial catastrophe, and stray crickets are still turning up in odd places.

I make this information public because if I do not send any tweets tomorrow, it is because my wife murdered me after finding a cricket in our bed in the middle of the night.

And that's the news from Red Lake Falls.

[dhol82]

1. Thank you. Great laugh before bed.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. LOL!

Funny story!

[KT2000]

3. another life lesson

darned if I know what it is - from where I sit - this is funny as hell.
Do they have babies?

[1620rock]

4. Well, at least the cats had fun.

[BigmanPigman]

5. I have tried to catch crickets before and never had any luck.

They jump and move so fast, I was always missing them by a mile.

[ProudLib72]

10. When you can take this stone from my hand, Cricket, then you will be ready

[House of Roberts]

6. I just read this to my ex (current Petco manager)

and her spouse (ex Petco employee).
They were howling with laughter. Both have their own cricket anecdotes from over the years. They usually handle about 3000 of them at a time. Crickets are a pain in the ass for expert cricket wranglers, so I can imagine how traumatic it was to deal with them as an amateur.
At one time we had over fifty guinea pigs in an attempt to breed them, but that's a story for another day.

[hostalover]

7. Hilarious!

[DRoseDARs]

8. Might I suggest adding this to your OP so people can listen while they read...?

[StarryNite]

9. What a delightful story...

at least for those of us who read it and didn't have to live it!

[tclambert]

11. That's just what happened to that Greek lady,

Pandora.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. omg imagine the noise

Easy solution: Release 250 toads in the house.

[lunasun]

13. Cricket in the house is supposed to be good luck but one would be enough :)

[Hermit-The-Prog]

14. can't believe nobody has offered this for the troubled cricket herder

[3catwoman3]

15. Laughing to the point of...

...tears here. I've read it 6 times already.