Adventures in Cricket Hunting

James L. Davis

Sometimes you find yourself doing things that make you pause to wonder “just why exactly am I doing this?” and perhaps more importantly, “is anyone watching me do this?”

Take cricket hunting for instance. I was in the midst of stalking a wild and quite possibly ferocious cricket when it occurred to me that perhaps what I was doing might appear odd to the casual observer. Unfortunately, most of the things that I do that might appear odd to the casual observer I don’t take time to consider until I am in the middle of doing them, which just so happens to be the case with my cricket hunting expedition.

I had been in the process of paying bills, which I often wonder “just why exactly am I doing this?” to which my creditors respond, “because we will sue you if you don’t,” when my son walked into my office to ask if he could sleep in the family room.

My son asks quite often if he can sleep in the family room and usually it is because he can no longer find his bed, it has been buried beneath two tons of clothing, skate boards, guitars, candy wrappers, old shoes or books, so I usually just tell him to stop bothering me and go clean his room.

But this time he came up with what I thought was a unique reason for not being able to sleep in his own room and it was because of a cricket.

It seems that a wild and possibly ferocious cricket had taken up residence in the window well outside his bedroom and the incessant creaking of the cricket made it impossible for him to sleep. This from the same son who requires the playing of a great big brass band to awaken in the morning, complete with oompahs, boompahs and flutes, to quote the good Dr. Seuss.

According to my children I have a tendency to make outlandish requests of them and I did so again by asking my teenage son to find the offending cricket and dispose of it, thus solving his problem. As any parent with teenage children knows, when you make outlandish requests of them their eyes become unhinged in their sockets and they start to roll around inside their noggin’, which is what happened then.

I have a theory that to cure such a medical condition all that is required is a light tapping of their head with a blunt instrument. I have not tested this theory but the voices in my head encourage it more and more frequently as my teenagers grow older.

“I couldn’t find the cricket,” my son said and when I asked if he had looked in the window well his eyes started to roll again. I told him to leave me alone because the voices in my head were getting louder and he left, looking dejected and, frankly, a little pathetic. A few minutes later I could hear my healthy teenage son making the same requests of his mother and providing the same excuses and it was then that I decided that crickets may be annoying to some people, but they don’t hold a candle to whining teenage sons. So I gathered up my cricket hunting gear and went in search of a wild and possibly ferocious cricket.

Cricket hunting only requires the minimum of hunting gear, namely a flash light. Although you can take weapons to protect yourself on the excursion I decided to face the cricket with my bare hands, which is a matter of personal bravery I suppose.

I first entered the cricket’s territory from the outside of the house, approaching almost noiselessly on my hands and knees. You could hear the cricket doing what crickets do best and when I had approach the window well I listened first with one ear and then the other and then both and could not detect exactly where the cricket was. It occurred to me that this might be some sort of ghost cricket because it sounded like it was close to the window seal but after cleaning out all of the leafs and twigs from the window well I could still not find the cricket.

So I went back inside and climbed up on the bed, opening the window to get a look at the window well. The cricket was silent for a moment and then slowly started in again. So being the mighty hunter that I was I climbed through the window and with my butt dangling above my son’s bed I shined the flashlight, hoping to sneak up on the cricket. There was no sign of the cricket, so I climbed out onto the lawn and climbed back through the window. It was around this time with half of my body in the house and the other half outside that I heard a car drive by and asked myself “just why exactly am I doing this?” and “is anyone watching me do this?”

After a great deal of time of stalking my prey I found the wild and quite possibly ferocious cricket in its den between the storm windows. I had planned to drag it out with my bare fingers but could not reach the beast, so I had to use a pen, which resulted in the cricket coming out in pieces, head first.

I gave the head to my teenage son and told him his room was now safe for sleeping in again. The cricket head we may have mounted, if we can find a cricket taxidermist.

Community Minded

James L. Davis

Emery Town proves again and again that it is the little town that could. That is not only because of the people who call Emery home, but the fact that the town is much more than a collection of homes, it is a community that seems to continually be lifting each other up.

Earlier this year the town went before the Permanent Community Impact Board to request a grant to complete its community center and the CIB not only granted the request it expedited the request and lauded the town for the efforts it had put into making the center a reality before it came asking for help.

That was followed up a short time later by the youth of the Emery Youth City Council and its leaders organizing a service auction to raise funds to put in lights for the Emery ball field. Youth of the town volunteered their service for everything from mowing yards to washing cars to babysitting and the community responded by buying up every auction item at prices that shocked the organizers, eventually netting the fund raiser $1,758.50, far more then they had even dreamed of raising.

On July 18 Emery Town held its first event in the community center, a pageant that they called a un-pageant. While they wanted to celebrate the young women of the town and give them an opportunity to sing, dance or perform for an appreciative audience, they did not want the girls competing against each other, risking hurt feelings or resentment. So the un-pageant was a chance for all the young women of Emery to perform if they wished and at the end of the night each received appreciative applause (and a tiara) as a star of Emery Town.

In their first event at the community center Emery Town showed that the building can and will be a focal point for the community, as it should be. The community of Emery Town sets a shinning example for every community in Emery County to follow.