Last night, heading to bed, I was especially tired and grateful for sleep.  My husband was working on his laptop beside me, but the light was off and all was well.

Then we heard it.  The dreaded

crick crick crick

of a cricket in our room.  It wasn’t too loud but had an echo-y sound to it, which made it really hard to pinpoint its location.

We would sit, listening, then creep out of bed to follow the sound-and of course it would stop.  We thought about bringing in the ferrets to hunt it down, but the little thieves would probably steal everything else in the room and ignore the cricket, so we decided that would be a last resort.

I went back to bed, but with my husband sitting up like a man who’s drawn the first night watch, the cricket sounding off every little while, and lights flicking on occasionally, you can guess how well I rested.

The worst part was the the fool thing would wait so long in between ‘singing’ that we almost had time to fall asleep.  We were just dosing off when

crick crick crick!

Finally, around 1:00am (remember that we usually get up at 6:00) my husband was fed up.  He began – brace yourself, now – to clean our room.

You have to understand, this room has not been cleaned since we moved into the house six plus months ago.  One whole half the room is full of opened moving boxes, partially unpacked.  The other corners of the rooms are taken by my husband’s tools and piles of books.

But he waded in.  I watched him work from under my eyelashes for a minute or two, then guilt drove me out of bed.  As I approached one box, full of smaller boxes, the cricket went off again. 

It really sounded like it was coming from that box.

I stood still, frozen but ready, like a cat getting set to pounce.

crick crick crick

It was definately coming from the box.  Gingerly I picked it up, and nudged open the bedroom doors.  Carrying the box as far from my body as my arms could reach, I headed down the stairs.

Then, from deep within the box came the rustling, scraping, sound of something big trying to get out.  Now the cricket had sounded like a little one, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

I threw the box from me, down the stairs, and gave a shriek.

My husband came running, sure I’d at least fallen, and found my paralized-by-cricket terror half-way down the stairs.  How the kids slept through it all, I’ll never know.

Hubby took pity on me and righted the box and re-filled it, then took it on out to the garage, and we went back to our room.

We listened.  Nothing.

It was now 2:00am, but we were cricket free.  At last.  And if it’s true, what they say, that crickets bring good luck, than we ought to be in for one charmed day.