Plankton

Plankton, the cricket, showed up in our garage a couple weeks ago. Pete, our alpha male Russian Blue cat (can’t come in the house kind of alpha, attacks anything that resembles a cat) and I heard the chirping one night. Pete stopped licking and looked up and I tried to locate where the noise was coming from. But every time I walked in the direction of the chirping, it stopped. Just like a frog. When I stopped paying attention the chirping resumed.

He moved around the garage, I soon discovered, and I say “he” with confidence after learning that only male crickets chirp. The next night he was under the shelves chirping away. The night after that he was at my table and then under an orange plastic box that holds vacuum cleaner nozzle attachments (yeah, I have a box of those). There, under the orange box, is where he seems to claim as his home base as this is where he always seems to be at the end of the day.

One morning on our way to school J said, “Mom I found the cricket!” and there he was at the base of the table! When I walked up to him he scurried off and disappeared between some boxes.

That night when we came home, he was back under the orange bin. I heard him, knelt down and lightly tapped on the box and talked to him. J said we needed to name him and came up with “Plankton,” a perfect name.

Plankton got braver as the days went by. In fact we quickly established a routine in the garage. I tapped on the orange box and called his name. Instead of quickly scurrying away like before, he’d usually slowly come out, little by little emerge from under the box, stop, and sit there at the edge as I talked to him.

I wondered if crickets were considered to be somewhat intelligent like ants, who, if they were bigger, could probably build skyscrapers without blueprints. But an online search revealed that crickets were not considered to be particularly intelligent among the insect crowd. But I swear my Plankton, a “black field cricket,” knows me at some level and recognizes my voice now.

I wondered if he was hungry. I did another search and I learned that they are primarily scavengers and consume fungi, decaying plants, grains, and they are a welcome addition to gardens since they eat insects that destroy plants such as aphids and ants.

I put some lettuce, mushroom pieces, and uncooked oatmeal in front of his orange man cave and Plankton poked his head out to investigate a piece of lettuce. He touched it with his antennae and seemed less and less afraid and I was starting to get attached to him and feeling like I wanted to pick him up and let him sleep on the bed.

The next night I couldn’t find him. Then I heard the chirping by the table and found him under an orange throw rug under my chair. On no! If I had not seen him, I could have easily pulled out the chair to sit down as I usually do and squashed my boy! He came out from under the rug as if to say hello and then ran back under the carpet. I didn’t sit on the chair that night and thought how careful I need to be when I step down since Plankton could be there taking a snooze or waiting for me to tap.

Before Plankton, I would have jumped if I saw a cricket, the same way (though to a lesser degree) as I would upon discovering a spider. But now, he is our visiting pet, since he can come and go as he pleases, though I wonder if I should help him go outside? Or leave him be?