It’s Just Not Cricket, Nature!
Flashback to a few years ago when I had broken up with a live-in boyfriend, had a new apartment with a lovely patio and was trying to enjoy the change of seasons…
I might respect all living creatures, but sorry cricket… you gotta go.
— Brian Gray (aka ürb) (@urbanbohemian) August 24, 2013
I both love and dread this time each year. Summer is fading out, the weather is changing, the heat dissipates… and the insects on and around my patio are trying to get laid. I say insects, but when I sit still and really listen, it’s just one, a loud cricket–I think it’s a cricket–that constantly chirps all night long trying to get some.
This comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is ridiculously accurate. All those lovely nature sounds of the countryside, wildlife songs blending together, may as well just be those creatures’ versions of “Netflix and Chill?” and when you get over, they’ve got “Pony” already playing in the background.
And the problem really isn’t the cricket trying to mate, it’s that where my patio is situated isn’t the best spot. It’s basically walled off next to both an alley and a parking lot. There are trees and grass and many of the patios have gardens, but it is not a haven for wildlife. So the cricket has chosen a really poor spot to set up shop.
One year, I was so ready to sleep with the screen door open all night that I went outside with a spray bottle to try and herd the thing off my patio and away. This was when a cricket had decided that right next to my patio door was the best place to do its thing, so even with the apartment fully shut, all I could hear throughout the night was that darn chirping!
I’ve already succumbed to the tyranny of my patio birds who will perch on my screen door when the bread I give them doesn’t meet their standards1, I can’t have my sleep wrecked by a cricket tryna hit it!
Thankfully it won’t last too much longer, I do feel bad because that cricket is all of us, when the bar closes down and they raise the lights to “GTFO” level. And like the song says, cricket, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” 🙄
1 Seriously. I tossed out pizza crusts once, but I neglected to chop them up. By the time I realized my mistake, the ants had gotten to them. The patio birds were not amused.
