A few minutes ago, I was sitting here minding my own business, and the boy walks up to me holding a cave cricket by one of its legs. He was presenting it to me, as if to say, "Look what I got!" The thing was still alive too, so I'm totally amazed that he was able to just reach down and pick it up. Those things jump like crazy.
As a kid I was terrified of cave crickets because I thought they were spiders. Both of my brothers' rooms were in our basement at the time, and therefore you were pretty likely to find these little buggers jumping around down there. We called them jumping spiders, and they were almost enough to keep me from spending too much time down there alone. Of course, the Nintendo was also down there, so I managed to overcome my fear most of the time.
When Kelly and I lived in Lilburn, Ga, for a few years, we had a big basement that was just overrun with these things at certain times of the year. I grew to not really mind them, as long as they didn't jump directly on me. They're just crickets after all.
But still I was caught off guard to see him presenting this thing to me. My first instinct was, "Drop that!" but then I realized it would likely hop off. So I managed to grab the trashcan and hold it out to him, where he gladly deposited the cricket. I then dumped him outside, where he'll live to hop another day. He's lucky neither of the dogs found him.
