Editor column: When wildlife comes to visit

By Mike Bollinger

Sometimes, things that normally live in the great outdoors decide they want to see what life is like in the great indoors.

On a recent early morning, I had such a visitor. The night started normally. I watched the U.S. Open tennis tournament until I could no longer stay awake, and sauntered off to bed around 11.

At about 3:30, I was awakened by a loud chirping noise. I quickly determined this noise to be a cricket. At first, I decided it was either right outside my bedroom window or right outside the back door. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but the chirping wouldn’t allow it.

Once I was awake enough to figure out where the noise was coming from, I decided the cricket was in the house somewhere. So, I got up, grabbed a flashlight, and began the search. I looked behind all the furniture, in the kitchen cabinets, and everywhere else I could think to look. I found nothing.

Convincing myself the cricket was outside and very close to the house, I went back to bed. I was there about 30 seconds when the loud chirping started again.

The search resumed. Finally, in a corner of the living room, there it was. The offending cricket.

I began to formulate a plan on how to corral it with the goal of catching it and putting it outside. I made a couple of attempts, but crickets jump. This makes them pretty hard to catch. In my case, this made it impossible to catch.

I wanted to return the cricket to its natural habitat. I also wanted to sleep. Knowing there are a lot of insects that have a short life span, I decided to look up the life span of a cricket to see if I could just let it chirp until it expired.

I found the life span of a cricket to be, on average, 90 days. I tried to ask the cricket how old it was, but I didn’t get any response. I finally decided it was either no sleep or, unfortunately, resorting to alternate measures.

Subsequent research has told me that it’s very lucky to have a cricket in your house. This one was black, which symbolizes knowledge, according to feng-shui. lovetoknow.com. A black cricket in the home is said to be a message to dig deeper for the solution to a problem.

I do have a couple of things I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with, so maybe I’ll take this sign and start to think harder about how to handle them.

In the meantime, hopefully the wildlife will decide to remain outside the house.