My mood right now should be: ENRAGED!!!!

For those of you who don't know what "The Cricket Wars" are then I'll clue you in.

In our basement we have these huge crickets, these are no ordinary crickets as they look most mutated where their bodies are shaped with humps, they have strange coloring like fried skin, and have eight legs instead of six.

I have seen them go by various names, camel crickets, camel-back crickets, cave crickets, spider crickets, my mother has given them the infamous name, "Cricker-spider hops" because of their spidery cricket like features and the fact that when they hop they cannot control where they are hopping and damn they do jump high.

I knew that I was going to have to face this and other strange creepy crawlies when I took on having a room in the basement... I had given up my room to my sister because she had to spend her entire life sharing a room and I felt that it was time for her to get her own space. So I moved in with my little brother.

It lasted 2 weeks.

Sick and tired of that room I took on the one of the rooms in the basement. Upon first moving in I cleaned out all the dead crickets (with much twitching) and moved everything in and made myself most comfortable. In fact I was pretty comfortable for a little while there until the seasons changed and it started getting warmer.

War one:
Ridiculousely tired and finally home, I was more than ready to fall into bed. I opened the door to my bedroom and flipped on the lights to find, one two three four hopping around my room. We were silent. The only movement was the occasional cricket hopeing to skitter away from me. I slowly closed the door and went upstairs most pissed off.

This wasn't the first night.

As my anger grew I started to realize that this was WAR. And thus the cricket wars began. I have even drawn a couple of pictures of this epicness. Armed with a vaccum I raced around the room seeking and destroying. Next we installed a dehumidifier since that was humidity was what these little crickers loved most. Soon the crickets faded, but everytime that the dehumidifier was turned off they would come back so I had to take special care to keep the thing up and running.

War two: Spiders

The little spiders actually don't bother me that much. But when your bed is literally a little over a foot from the ceiling and little spiders making webs all over it, yeah, tends to creep you out. I tried not to be bothered by them even though they were so close to my head. I think it was the one night that I woke up and spotted a rather large one in the corner of the ceiling... And some of my friends probably recall me telling them of how I found a spider in my hair one morning. So absolutely terrified I was able to capture them and release them to the wild. Finally my bug problems were officially over.

War Three: Mice?

As most of my friends may know about me, my life is like a movie, and so when things seem to be fine they just throw something else at me. So I thought I heard mice scurrying around in my room, either that or they were some HUGE ASS bugs, the thing is I never saw them so this war is more of how I had to keep battling to keep bugs out. This meant vaccuming frequently, changing my dehumidfier almost daily (because my room was so humid it only took one or two days for it to collect a gallon of water from the AIR. And of course the dehumidfier heated up my room making the room even HOTTER in the summer air. OH! and wolf mosquitos (yeah those giant mosquitos) they've scared me out of my room too. And so I finally felt like I had my room back to myself. By the way, I've often come into to states of such terror that I loose the ability to move. It's taken real guts for me to stay in that room I gotta say...

War Four: Daddy Long Legs

This one is one of the most recent being just the night before. I was in my room extremely glad to be sleeping in my own comfy bed (I don't know what it is about me and sleeping in my own bed in my own room, it gives me this really excited feeling that makes me giggle sometimes while I'm trying to go to sleep) I was sleeping contently when I heard something flying against the light, I looked up and saw a big as wolf mosquito with something hanging off of one of its legs. It scared me shitless, especially because wolf mosquitos like to smack around on the ceiling and my bed being so close and all, yeah you get the idea. So I turn on one of my lights and jump down, then I freeze because parts of my floor is moving. Frozen I count and make sure to watch each pattern to make sure none of it was heading towards me. One, two, three, four... another five. Five daddy long legs. FIVE DADDY LONG LEGS.

So i once again took about 10 minutes to leave my room and made my way back up stars.

In the morning I was able to get rid of the mosquito and there is still one daddy long leg that was running around my room but at some point in the day it disappeared for some odd reason and So i thought that I had my room back to myself again and now I would be extra EXTRA cautious!

War Five: Bugs Win

So I came downstairs to get my PJs. There is an outlet where my dehumidifier and my cellphone charager is plugged in next to my dresser. I saw it. Yes I did. I think that it might have been where that poor little daddy long legs went. On the wires I saw the biggest spider I had ever seen in my life. It was bigger than a wolf spider and looked different, almost like a tarantula but not as fat. Yeah that's right it had really long thin legs and it was a beautiful deep brown. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and even had me say "Oh. My. God." Three times first in a whisper and then in almost a shriek. I couldn't believe this. I ran upstairs to have my mom and dad look. My mom came down and spotted it and got very quiet and said, "That is a huge spider..." It was SO BIG. But what was even more troublesome was that we were afraid that it might be a Brown Reclouse. Not only would it be terrifying for it to even get close enough to it to dig its fangs into me, but if it succeeded in doing so then the area where it bit would slowly decay and then a huge chunk of my tissue there would die leaving a dent in my body. This can be deadly if it bites in a fatal area, such as your neck.

That was the last straw

The very last straw.

The bugs win and danie looses... I've fought long and hard but I am just no match for that which lives in my basement.