Pictures of "The Flood" and cricket season

Well here are the pics I got on the digital camera of the results of the 7.5" of rain last Saturday (Aug 18th 2007)

This is the car port and it is covered with about 2 inches of water! Below the water is the mud that always seem to come along with the rain!

Now further down this page is a picture that is not for the squeamish! I just want to warn you now in case you don't want to view it. If you have a phobia about bugs then you might want to prepare yourself!

Meanwhile, something that everyone can look at, everyone needs at some time in their life and something I thought I'd NEVER, EVER make. . . . yes I have made my first pair of alpaca socks!

They are hand dyed (no feet included in this) by ME! Yes I dyed the yarn, then I got up the courage to knit with 5, yes I said FIVE, knitting needles, double pointed no less so twice as dangerous. What a challenge this was in the beginning, I was beginning to think that all those sock knitters out there were genius's..... WOW what a challenge it became.

So here we have it. . . my first pair of socks. Jerry is the lucky recipient. Believe it or not he's thrilled as he absolutely loves alpaca socks. Wears the thick terry alpaca socks in the middle of the summer heat. He says because they have this wicking quality he can keep cooler in thick alpaca socks than he can in cotton socks. Go figure!

OK, as warned earlier. . . if you aren't ready for this sickening picture. . . go no further. For those brave enough to continue here it is. . .

This is a picture of the crickets that were on the outside of our window Saturday morning. Because all the ground was covered in water they climbed up the side of the house and were clinging on anything they could find, the window screen being one item they could easily hang onto.

My camera battery decided to quit at this point and I didn't get pics of the side of the house and the back yard fence. They were even more disgusting than this. If you could imagine 2 1/2 feet from the ground up, completely covered with crickets. . . yuck, yuck, yuck. Ooh I hate bugs.

But there is one more thing that's worse (for me) Somehow every evening, while I am sitting watching Law and Order (what else is there on sattelite TV?) knitting my socks every darn evening, at about 10pm a cricket lands on ME. Yes, ME. Did I mention that I absolutely HATE bugs? How they have the audacity to land on ME I don't know but let me tell you what happens next is not what they expect. I scream, jump out of my chair, kind of shaking and hitting myself to get this, this thing off me. Yelling at it to get OUT, get out, get out. It gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Now I have to mention that this was not a single incident. Every evening for about two weeks this happened to me. I swear that they were crawling up into the heater vent during the day and sitting there waiting for an opportune moment to kamakaze drop themselves right onto my right shoulder. Yes they even had a spot picked out for this adventure. I couldn't believe it. Did they "attack" Jerry, oh no. . . only me. How dare they!

Somehow, since the "flood" the cricket olympics have ceased to happen. Why I don't know, but I'm happy.

The other thing I don't think everyone knows about crickets. When they die. . . they stink. I mean sickly stink. I found that out last year when we were inundated inside with them (how dare they) and I spent every morning vacuuming up all of them, dead and alive. After two days of vacuuming I discovered that every time I turned on the vacuum this foul smell came wafting up to my nostrils. I told Jerry I thought it was the crickets, dead in the bag. Oh no, he didn't think so.

Well now that same stink is outside the house, outside the back door, in the back yard, on the side of the house, by the front door. . . . . everywhere! I am about ready to go outside and vacuum around the house.

Well my education has now become your education on crickets. They are immune to insect sprays by the way, don't know why.

Next year we are going to start early and spray indoors and out, and if I have my way I'll make Jerry spray all the heater vents up in the ceiling too! The neighbors told us that each year they always get a plague of something or another. Can't wait for the bol weavils (just kidding!)