Basement ecosystem update.

I’ve become very accomplished at falling asleep without killing all the other living things in the room. Call it maturity, call it severe exhaustion, but it’s happening.

For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, crickets are attracted to my corner of the basement and my corner alone. They’re coming in through the (now empty) cess pool trap and then they make their way around the perimeter of the basement and into my room. They set up shop on the wall to the right of my bed, under the window, and then wait to see if I am going to kill them.

If I try to, they jump around like hyperactive children while I suppress screams and risk nosebleeds from my sky-rocketing blood pressure. If I succeed I am left with a pile of cricket legs and guts and the knowledge that one more wooden puppet has lost its conscience. If I don’t succeed, the cricket hops out of sight for ten to fifteen minutes and then makes the trek back to the open trap.

If I don’t make an attempt on their lives, they just sit on said wall and watch me read. Sometimes they sing and I have learned it is best to just join in lest I lose my mind trying to tune the little buggers out. We might harmonize a patriotic number or a T Swift ballad (back up, baby, back up) or lately, a heart-wrenching rendition of O Holy Night and then as I drift off to sleep I watch them slowly tip toe up the wall and into the oblivion between the rafters.

Ok, it’s not an oblivion, it leads directly outside.

Surprisingly, nothing comes in that way. That I’ve noticed anyway. I intentionally don’t pay much attention.

I haven’t seen any spiders down here since I started spraying for them on a regular basis. And the silverfish have been diminished to such low numbers of youngsters (You can tell because they are small. Those two and three inch monsters are 6 months to 2 years old. That’s right, there’s a bug with a longer lifespan than some goldfish. Barf.) that they have had to regroup and retreat until they are of marriageable age and can reproduce to save their population. But the joke is on them; I’m going to kill them before they can do that.

But I have an occasional roly-poly, which I don’t mind at all. And once or twice I’ve come across some beetle-looking thing, but not on my side of the basement, so I don’t mind them.

And so I have learned to sleep with these critters haunting my space, namely the crickets. I’ve forgiven their resemblance of spiders and as long as they are not touching me or my bed I can handle bunking with them.

At least until I get over this recent bout of insomnia and can function again.