Tao of Pauly

Los Crickets

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Disney brainwashed me into believing that crickets were green, and that they spoke English, and wore top hats, sang flaming show tunes, and did annoying shit. Well, the last part was correct.

I had never really seen too many crickets up and close and personal until I moved to L.A. of all places. When I first started dating Nicky, a cricket that lived inside the wall of her bedroom. Some nights it annoyed the fuck out of me during those edgy insomnia-ridden hours when I wasn't quite comfortable enough to sit around her apartment (because she had a room mate at the time). I'd have to bang on the wall to get the bugger to shut up otherwise, I'd lie in bed in utter agony.

Last fall was the first time that I saw a cricket inside our apartment. A couple of random ones that appeared late nights. They never made a sound but skipped around silently. They almost blended into the hardwood floors since they were a mixture of brown, beige, and euchre. I never knew how they gained access inside the apartment. One day they just showed up and they appear from time to time.

How do I deal with the illegal cricket immigration? I slaughtered them. I know, I know, I'm going to hell for the act and for even writing it. I'm probably going to get a bunch of hate mail from pro-insect activists who have nothing else better to do that scour the web for hate crimes against insects. I'm pleading insanity. The shrill sounds of crickets drive any human insane. If anything I was doing our society a justice by cleansing our community with loud-mouth insects.

Of course, some folks will tell me that I'm foolish to kill a cricket since they symbolize good luck. I should be swooning over the fact that crickets are gracing me with their presence. In Brazil, crickets usually symbolize impending wealth and money. Well, if that's the case, I'd sure as hell like to see more crickets.

As I write this, a couple of crickets are milling about in the alley outside the window of my office. They are communicating with one another. I don't speak cricket so I can't tell if they are bitching about the Angels loss to the Yanks or if they are relaying recon information to launch an attack on our apartment. Maybe they think I have their fellow crickets hostage since they have not seen them in days or months. Little did they know that their squished carcasses were flushed away and never to be seen again. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. No mas crickets.

I thought cats eat bugs. Where the hell are the alley cats? They can have a feast on all of the crickets having outside. Would homeless people eat crickets? They have some protein but you'd have to eat hundreds for it to make a difference. There's a bunch of bums who go dumpster diving by the Jack in the Box. Nothing says nutrition like the leftover food people toss in the trash at a fast food eatery.

It rained for a day and a half and came down heavily at some points, something that rarely happens and couple of bums makeshift home washed out. They were squatting on discarded box springs in the alley behind a mortuary at the far end of the alley where the Jack in the Box is located.

Yeah all of this plight is located within a block of my apartment in the slums of Beverly Hills -- Chinese food, kosher baked goods, a medicinal marijuana dispensary, Indian food (that I think is a front for the mob or a narco-terrorist organization because I have never seen a patron), a church, and a Catholic school. No wonder there's dozens of for rent signs.