Joshua's New Pet

Tuesday evening, while we were watching the Republican National Convention, the cricket started... What do they do? Crick? Sing? Not croak.

Well, you know. It sounded like it was right there in the room with us.
Turns out, it was.

Meet Jacky.



You see, the cricket appeared right in the middle of our family room. All of a sudden. William's quick response had the cricket under a little blue cup in no time. Then he put a plastic storage container over the blue cup...just to be safe.

There the cricket stayed until the next morning. Joshua, who had been asleep when the capture took place, wondered what was under all of that plastic stuff. William artfully lifted the big plastic container and removed the blue cup--all without letting the cricket escape (it was moving a little slowly anyway--what with being under plastic in complete darkness all night...no food, air, water...).

As soon as Joshua saw that bug, he said, "Aaaahhhh. It's my pet. It's name is Jacky."

Hhmmmm.



Now, I've never been one to adopt pets from the wild. Or from the pet store. I think that aversion began when I bought two little goldfish--one for Carrie and one for William. We brought Rebecca and Goldie home with us. I didn't know the first thing about "raising" goldfish, so I looked online. The first site I found was called "Goldfish Sanctuary." (Check out the quote on the top of their page.) That site totally had me a worried mess! Are they suffocating? Do I have enough square inches per fish? It was no fun to have goldfish, and I was honestly relieved when we found them doing the backfloat in their bowl.

Then came Carrie's frog. She caught it out in our yard and fell in love with it. We even borrowed GG's big fish tank for it so that it would have plenty of space. I cleaned out that fish tank really well with bleach and a scrubber. We added rocks and a little pool of water. Then I looked online to see what else frogs need.

Hold on. Did that say that I shouldn't clean out its home with bleach? It might asphyxiate it?

Great.

Then the frog got loose one evening...I'm not sure how. And I started screaming, and William started screaming. Carrie entered the room, had no idea why we were screaming, but she started screaming too. Then she realized what the problem was and calmly caught the frog and put it back in the tank.

The next day we released the frog back into the wild.

But...how hard can a cricket be? Once again, we looked online. Carrie read that they'll eat almost anything. Even each other. So, already I feel that we are being humane--it doesn't have to worry about getting eaten by its own kind.

Jacky loves popcorn.
He/She actually wrestles with it while eating it.



And kiwi. Yum!



All Joshy can talk about right now is his Jacky. He even reprimanded me for calling it a cricket.

"It's not a cricket now. It's Jaaaaacccckkkkkyyyyyy. I love Jacky."

He does love Jacky--just not its CHIRPING--that's the word I was looking for! Just not its chirping. He walks by the box with his hands over his ears.

I asked Josh what he thought Jacky was singing, and he said, "I think it's singing to God."

Wow. Don't you just think that must be true?



So far, so good. I woke up to Jacky's chirping today. It seems to be healthy...still.

Carrie told me that if taking care of a cricket became too overwhelming for me, we could always give it to Calla to give to her lizard.

Poor Jacky.