I have a pet that doesn't like to be petted. If I touch her, she tries to chomp me. The decision to purchase a leopard gecko is questionable at best. You get nothing out of the relationship other than a warm, red glow from one room, because lizards in Illinois need heat lamps to live. Once your gecko has grown to full size and it's done shedding and eating its own skin, there's not much reason to watch them. Except at feeding time. My gecko has been fed every week since 2008.
The right number of crickets to dump in a gecko's habitat is one dozen. By that count, I've sentenced almost 9,000 crickets to death. Here's an interesting statistic: roughly a quarter of them commit suicide by drowning. I have to assume their cause of death is suicide, because when I remove their soggy, limp bodies from the reservoir dish, the water's depth is low enough for them to stand without harm. In my overactive imagination, I picture them surviving being dumped into a strange, sandy desert and finding themselves face to face with a rampaging lizard who quickly swallows three of them whole within the first minute. The others spend the rest of their short lives being stalked by the creature with a tail that twitches like an animated question mark when it's in hunting mode.
This week, one lone insect survived from Sunday until Thursday. I heard him chirping that morning. In our language, his name translated to "Crick-Et," and he was a traveler from Crickton, the world of crickets. His lament could be heard through walls; perhaps through the roof; out into the heavens and beyond. His song was a woeful plea. He told the story of a cruel man who served him up to a hungry monster. "Crick-Em, Crick-En, and Crick-Oh have all taken their lives. The rest have been consumed. I, your last son, request assistance from the mother planet."
Cut to six o'clock Friday morning. No sound from my gecko's tank. I take my dog outside and walk around the yard with her. It's late fall and the sun hasn't risen. I have my flashlight and swing it in the direction of a heavy thump on the ground behind me. An immense space cricket, twenty feet tall, looms over me. I back away. As it advances, the fallen leaves crunch under its many legs. It corners me against the fence. It's too late for me to get the garden hose from the garage to fill a bucket and drown myself. Right before it seizes me and swallows me whole, it hisses words I can understand: "Vengeance for Crick-Et."