This is a special guest post from Dave L. Johnson. Way back when I first started keeping reptiles I became instantly hooked on the hobby and in the space of a few months I soon had the start of a collection amassing. I had a few snakes but my real passion was lizards as interacting with them was a big part of the attraction of keeping herp’s for me. Pretty soon I realized that having a room full of growing lizards was not going to be a cheap hobby as they all ate like there was no tomorrow and my live food bill soon became bigger than my own food shopping bill.Thankfully though I found a company online (much like our own Complete Herpetoculture Store)that offered next day delivery on a variety of insects and surprisingly were the same price per tub as the reptile shops were selling them for so I started having my insects delivered direct to my home. It was still expensive due to the quantity of tubs I was going through and it was not until I had used this service a few times I realized they offered different size tubs at only a percentage of a price increase.
Small tubs were £3 and contained around 50 crickets then they had maxi packs for £4:50 which contained around 100 crickets or for £12 you could get 500 crickets. Didn’t take much number crunching to realise the 500 was the best option for me so clicked on buy and sat back with a big smile on my face knowing I had halved my weekly live food bill.
Next day came the knock on the door and I opened it and there stood the delivery man with a sack tied at the top with a piece of twisted wire. This is where the always read the small print comes into play.
I foolishly assumed they would turn up in a few maxi packs so you can imagine my surprise to be handed a sack. First thing that went through my mind was how the hell am I going to get them out of the sack without them ending up all over the house. With hindsight I should have put the sack in the bath and opened it then scooped them into the empty tubs I had, but without hindsight I went at the task in hand without factoring in possible mistakes.
I have a two foot deep and two foot square stainless steel box I fabricated at work for my female chameleon as a nest box so I quickly made a frame lid I covered in mesh then took the sack onto the paved area on the back garden and undid the metal tie.
The sack was full of screwed up newspaper and five hundred very lively crickets. I placed the open end into the box and shook the sack gently and to my horror the newspaper blocked the top of my box and crickets started spilling out all around the tub on the floor.
I was darting from side to side scooping them up shouting
NOO oh my god oh my god NOOOO ewwww
Somehow managed to capture around 350 of them. Then felt the wriggling. They were in my hair in my ears in my t-shirt in my boxer shorts even managed to get into my socks. So next came the impromptu strip down to my underwear (still stood in the garden) and the Homer Simpsonesque ewwww shudder hand shaking dancing on the spot.
This should have been the end of my won’t do that again in a rush task but unfortunately it indeed was not. At around nine o’clock that evening the lovely retired lady I live next door to knocked on my door and said “excuse me David but is there any chance you could come round to my house as I think I have a problem with my central heating.” I went round and she said “Just put my heating on to heat the water for a bath and it’s making a funny noise.” I had to apologise and explain to her it was actually one of my escaped crickets that had climbed up the outside of her house into the air vent and was sat in the cavity between the brickwork chirping its little heart out. Took two cans of Raid wasps killer spray to get it to shut the hell up.
And it didn’t end there. I live in a quiet little town in Yorkshire England and this happened during a warm summer so the escaped crickets survived. So for three weeks all my neighbours gardens in the evening sounded like the Serengeti.
One mistake I definitely learned from and have no intention of ever repeating.