True story, you can't make this stuff up.

Crickets make excellent bluegill bait. I’ve used them since I was a kid. No more. Never again.

Recently we had a run of bad luck, all three of our cars broke down last weekend, major breakdowns, expensive ones. One went down Saturday morning. One that afternoon and the other that night. All were well maintained and in good shape, good shape prior to breaking down that is.

Sunday my wife and I were having breakfast in a local restaurant and we were talking about the cricket invasion. It happens every few years at this time. Suddenly there are crickets everywhere, gazillions of them. It usually lasts about three weeks to a month then they go back to normal levels.

She said “I killed three of them Friday night in the house.”

“No, don’t say that. It’s really bad luck to kill a cricket in the house. That probably explains the three breakdowns.” I teased her. “I’ve always heard not to kill a cricket in the house, so I never do.”

She looked at me kind of funny. “Don’t care, they are nasty looking and I won’t have them in the house and I’m not about to pick one up and carry it outside.” The conversation drifted on to other things.

Monday night she was driving home, in the dark, miles from the nearest house and had a flat tire. Tuesday morning she told me she had killed another cricket just hours before the flat tire.

Wednesday evening, just at dark she runs into the house white as a ghost and shaking like a leaf. “A snake just dropped out of a tree right next to me. I was watering the grass and heard a plumpf sound, looked down and a copperhead was almost on my foot. The damn thing fell out of a tree and almost on my head!” After she calmed down – several hours later mind you – she said she had killed a cricket just minutes before going outside.

Now, I am not inordinately superstitious, no more than average. But…I’m not killing any more crickets, not on purpose. I’ll find other bait. AT the rate the luck was running bad with increasing intensity and shorter time frames the next one killed might explode and send shrapnel flying.

Yesterday she told me she went into the kitchen to cook lunch and a cricket was on top of the stove. She told me she told it “You can have the f.....g stove.”

That's my girl!

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