Bob CollinsThe struggle is real in rural Minnesota, people. Oh, sure, you city slickers have it pretty easy when you need a bunch of crickets for whatever you need crickets for. But in rural Minnesota? It’s cricket eat cricket out there.
Christopher Ingraham, the Washington Post writer who moved to Red Lake County without properly checking the cricket situation a few years ago, is finding that out. The cricket store is pretty far away (North Dakota) when you live out in the parts of the state where you can actually hear crickets, but the investment in rural broadband is really paying off.
He told his story on Twitter:
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
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
With the benefit of hindsight, this was a mistake.
— 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
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
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 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
When you have a blog or a column, everything is worthy of a post. Ingraham’s editor demanded a column on crickets. He got a column on crickets.
And now, the nation couldn’t give a damn about Fergus Falls.
All comments are mandatory reading.
in every relationship there is the accidental cricket-releaser person and the where-are-all-these-damn-crickets-coming from person, look in your soul and ask: which am I?
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) December 29, 2018
(h/t: Marcheta Fornoff)
[Update 1:17 p.m.] Here’s how to not let this happen to you.
