R.I.P. Jiminy

When I got up before dawn this morning to use the bathroom, in the glow from the TV I could see a black spot on the floor.  I turned on the light, and there he was:  my little cricket friend from two days ago lying belly-up on the floor, quite dead.  Oh, Jiminy!  I hardly knew ye! 

No small specimen, he.  He was a healthy size.  My understanding is that crickets eat about anything, so, with all of the crud on the floor in my house, I'm pretty sure he didn't starve to death.  Not sure what the life expectancy of a cricket is, but it did start my brain to wondering what killed him. 

I'll never know, of course....or care...but it does remind me of other occasions somewhat like it.

Back in 1980, my ex and I moved to Pontiac, IL, where he was to take over the principalship of the junior high school.  I don't remember a house search--only that we settled on an old brick farmhouse in the country just outside of town to rent.  The living space was all on one level, but it had a full basement and a walk-in attic.  There was also a "dumb-waiter" from the kitchen to the basement--a pulley-driven platform that, in the old days, would take home-canned goods from upstairs to downstairs without a zillion human trips.  We had many encounters with country vermin in that house.

Megan had her second birthday there in March.  I put the remains of her birthday cake in a Tupperware cake holder in the dumb-waiter for safe keeping.  The next day, as she sat in her high chair, I opened the dumb-waiter to get her a piece of cake, and out jumped a mouse!  He had been gnawing on the Tupperware in hopes of getting to the cake.  Megan saw it and said, "A buggy!"  I said, "No...a mousey!"  I chased the thing onto the inside back porch and squished it between some boxes stored there, hoping beyond hope that I had killed it.  (Yeah, right.) 

That afternoon, when Joe got home from school, I saw the mouse run out from under the door of Megan's room to the bathroom.  I asked my big, strong husband to do something about it.  He stood up, sniffed a bit and hiked up his britches, then went into the bathroom and shut the door.  What happened after that was nothing short of cartoonish.  I heard banging and knocking and it seemed as though the bathroom walls were pulsating in and out as the fight ensued.  Finally--FINALLY--I heard the toilet flush and Joe emerged.  He came out victorious over the mouse, but not before the mouse had run up his leg! 

All that spring and summer, we fought crickets and mice and spiders and other critters in the house....and outside, too.  I had a vegetable garden there.  I complained that something was eating off my newly-planted tomato plants.  Then I heard KA-POW! Joe used his shotgun to eliminate the culprit--a ground squirrel.  About that same time, I was working in the garden with my 2-year-old playing nearby when I noticed a rat sitting under the propane tank.  It was not flopped over looking dead, but it was just sitting there, no matter how close I got, and I worried.  Was it sick from eating rat poison in the outbuildings?  Was it rabid?  Would it hurt my child?  Was it even alive?  I was alone at the time but determined that I could not just fold up and go inside without taking care of the problem.  I found a shovel and beat the silly thing to death.  (Honestly, it didn't move, so I'm not totally certain it was even alive to begin with, but I have to tell you that it was really difficult for me to beat on what I thought was a living thing, even if it was really, really sick.  I have no trouble killing bugs, but other critters get to me.)  I was traumatized!!

I thought I was the only one frustrated by having the outside in the house all the time.  But one day, as I was going up the attic stairs for something, I found a dead mouse halfway up the stairs.  I wondered what caused it to die there.  When I posed the question to my husband, he said, "The crickets and spiders probably beat it to death!"  I got the message.

What really cooked things for me was when the basement toilet in that house ran, unnoticed, for many hours.  It drained the well below the level of the water pump, and the pump burned out.  We went out to check on the well.  The only thing that covered it was a small v-shaped roof (with shingles) and chicken wire around the sides.  Visible down inside, among unknown other things, were a string mop-head and the plastic rings that hold a 6-pack of cans together.  Whaaat??  And we've been drinking this water?????  The landlady was not particularly pleased to have to replace the pump, but we were done with the whole place.  We found a house in town to rent--a much better choice.  We were only in the farmhouse for, maybe, 18 months.  It had been an adventure, but I was glad when it was over.

Back to Jiminy.  I didn't kill this one.  His blood is not on my hands...and may the god of insects have mercy on his shiny black little soul.  Oh...and good riddance!