Posted on December 4th 1987
Field Crickets
By Alex Linder
[ The following is from a forum thread posting. ]
[this was published in the paper's offical editorial space, by me in my capacity as opinions editor. people were ??? by it, probably assuming it had some deeper, anti-communist meaning]
[Published in Pomona College's The Student Life, Friday, December 4, 1987]
Editorial Boards
Field Crickets
One day over Thanksgiving break I was walking to Frary when I happened to see something incredibly disgusting - a field cricket. I don't know if you're familiar with this variety of insect, but let me assure you they are unprepossessing in the extreme.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a good insect as well as the next guy, but field crickets drive me up the wall. Unlike simple black crickets which chirp inoffensively (like Cecil Sagehen), field crickets have nothing to commend their existence.
Let me describe one for you. The first thing you notice about a field cricket is its big, ugly, red-orange head. Attached to this hideous tomato-colored ball is a whitish abdomen covered with brownish stripes and shaped like the bottom half of a bowling pin. But the worst thing about this species is its size. They're big. They're real big. Imagine a typical black cricket. Field crickets put them to shame. I estimate the one I saw was about one and a half inches long and a good three-quarters of an inch tall.
The cricket outside Frary moved with what seemed calculated deliberation. Or maybe it was just sick. As I stared at it in the dying light of the afternoon sun, my mind began to wander. Suddenly, I was back in George Orwell's 1984.
"So Mr. Linder," said a smallish man with an evil smile, "what is it that you fear most?" I tried to avoid thinking about field crickets, but couldn't. "Aha," said the smaller man's companion, "field crickets, eh?" They strapped me to a table and brought out a small, covered piece of Tupperware. "Guess what's in here, buddy!"
I lay motionless, hoping I could eat the required three field crickets without betraying the woman I loved.
As they placed the first insect on my defenseless lips, I tried to steel myself mentally. I remembered how, as a young lad, I used to feed grasshoppers to the cat. While I doubled up in laughter and disgust, the cat masticated with slow precision; crunch followed crunch as wings, thorax and soft parts slowly disappeared. Now, as I bit into the cricket, I tried to become the cat. Hell, it worked for Liddy and the rat. As my teeth pressured the red globe, the cricket squirmed and writhed like a centipede with a pin through its head. With all its tiny sense organs screaming in pain the full-bodied cricket twisted and turned, its legs pushing and straining in a vain attempt to extricate itself from the deathly orifice. Not that it was easy for me, mind you. After five minutes, the end was near. That tears that had been welling burst forth and mixed with the sweat on my cheeks and the saliva dripping out of the corner of my mouth; I swallowed -- I was now a third of the way through my ordeal. . . .
The footsteps of a passerby brought me back to reality.
The next day when I passed the field cricket, I was glad to see that a colony of ants had found it. They had gotten inside its exoskeleton and were eating its eyes and internal organs from inside. I smiled at their efficiency and silently thanked them for their service. And when I pass by my little friend today, I fully expect him to be but a shell of his former self.
Alex Linder
Opinions Editor