Christopher Ingraham, A Washington Post data reporter recently shared his experience of ordering crickets for his pet lizard which he adopted and as anyone who gets a new pet, first thing we do is order some food for them. That's exactly what Christopher done. However, he did not anticipate or predict what was to come once the item was delivered by FedEx. He was happy to share the full story for our amusement…
So, a shipment of crickets for the lizard arrived via FedEx today. It was my first time ordering bulk crickets off the internet, and I naively assumed that they would be in like, a bag or some other contraption to facilitate easy transfer to another container. They were not.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
They were in a cardboard box. And I cut the tape and opened the box and SURPRISE! Crickets everywhere. It was the middle of the workday and I didn't have time to deal with cricket logistics, so I put the tape back on the box.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
And then I put the box in the upstairs bathroom, the only semi-contained place in the house where I knew the kids and the cats and the dogs wouldn't be able to get at the box and tear it open and unleash 250 hungry crickets into our warm, semi-humid environment.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
About 20 minutes later I'm back at work on my computer, and I hear my wife in the kitchen: "where are these goddamn crickets coming from." I freely admit I had not kept her fully up-to-date on my cricket purchasing plans.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
And at first I was like "okay, maybe one or two got out when I initially opened the box. No biggie." I kept working.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
With the benefit of hindsight, this was a mistake.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I'm trying to wrap up a story but I keep hearing cricket-related exclamations coming from the kitchen. Eventually I get up to investigate. I say, "So uh the crickets got here toda–"
"I REALIZE THAT," she says. "WHY ARE THEY ALL OVER THE KITCHEN"— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I say "That's a good question. Let me check something." I walk over to the bathroom. I open the door. There are crickets. Everywhere.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
Crickets on the floor. Crickets on the walls. Crickets in the sink. Crickets in the toilet.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
For some reason my first instinct is to flush the toilet, as if that will do anything to solve the problem of crickets in all the other places that were not the toilet. I shut the door. "Uh, don't come in here!" I try to sound cheerful.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
Apparently I had not sealed the box shut as well as I should have. I ended up rushing out to the shed, in the 18" of snow and below zero temperatures, to pick up a spare aquarium we had. I spent about 45 minutes collecting crickets from the bathroom.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
Of course by this point many had migrated elsewhere. They were in the closet. In the shoes. Making their way downstairs to the playroom. The cats were having what I can only imagine was the greatest day of their lives.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I tried to collect all of them. It was like the world's shittiest game of Pokemon. But here we are, roughly 10 hours after the initial catastrophe, and stray crickets are still turning up in odd places.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I make this information public because if I do not send any tweets tomorrow, it is because my wife murdered me after finding a cricket in our bed in the middle of the night.
And that's the news from Red Lake Falls.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
He further went on to report and assure us all everything was ok…
I'm pleased to report that I'm still alive, and that my marriage is still intact! You all had so much fun with this that my editor made me turn it into a story, which I present to you here, as a sort of director's cut of this thread. https://t.co/oXuG9Tj4yy
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
To all you monsters who demanded photos of the infestation: believe it or not, while a horde of crickets was marauding through my house I did not think to whip out my phone and start snapping pics
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
I mean, can you imagine?
Wife: THERE'S A CRICKET IN MY PUMPKIN PIE
Me: This is tremendous content, where's my phone— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
But I'm glad you all enjoyed our suffering, we've been laughing our asses off at your responses all day which almost makes it all worth it. To my new followers, I look forward to disappointing you in 2019.
— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018
People were quick to respond to his story and were in right hysteria, check out some of the responses from our lovely inter webbers…
So same thing happened to me, except I opened the box to 2000 dead crickets and was totally bummed, only to find out the next morning that they hibernate.
— DontKnowMeSucka Ω (@DontKnowMeSucka) December 30, 2018
I came for the story, I stayed for the comments! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/ePeD5UEfCL
— Kate Rice (@adorkablegrrl) December 29, 2018
You had me at "So, a shipment of crickets for the lizard arrived via FedEx today."
— Mike Spinks (@mbspinks) December 29, 2018
Look on the bright side, how many men can say they LITERALLY heard crickets when their wives gave them the silent treatment?!
— JackWBower (@Trumpet1984) December 29, 2018
Amazon out here delivering plagues to people's homes.
— ThisisNog (@ThisisHog) December 29, 2018
I read the @_cingraham thread to my parents in the lobby of a movie theater and passers by stopped to hear it. https://t.co/6FZuyyZN9T
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) December 29, 2018
When I was a teenager I made this mistake with a 1000 live crickets for my pet bearded dragons. I got scared when they started jumping out and dropped the box. They were all over. I remember finding stragglers for a good week or two. My mom was so mad.
— Adrienne (@AP_1015) December 30, 2018
