Crickets This Time of Year

How long do crickets live? I've had this real creepy critter lurking on my front porch for at least three days now. It seems to be that time of year when they all start to think the inside of your house is more desirable than the outside of your house. These six legged fiends hide in the tiny crack near your door and your stoop, just waiting for you to unwittingly open the front door and let them in.

There he is, every time I leave my house, looking up at me with those sad and insanely creepy insect eyes. I'd step on him and end this turmoil, but, in true Kristi fashion, I have this completely irrational fear of how this action might turn on me. What if I just barely miss squishing him, and, out of extreme anxiety, he maniacally hops up onto my leg. Then he crawls up my pant leg, and, in my complete panic, I'm unable to locate him anywhere in my clothing. So then I spend the rest of the day just waiting for the icky insect to reappear. Just when I let my guard down I feel a small tickle on the back of my neck. I absentmindedly brush at it with my hand - and BAM - there he is, again, touching my skin and sending me into cardiac arrest. I don't want anything like that to occur, so I mostly just shoo him away from a distance until it's safe to exit my home.

In related news, I think I may need to start drawing the bugs in my comics a little less realistically. I'm doing a bang up job of giving myself the heebie-jeebies every time I make one of these!

Beautiful Butterflies

It's that time of year again, late summer, which means butterfly season, cricket season, grasshopper season - essentially anything-with-six-legs-and-a-hopping-or-flying-habit season. I'm intensely curious about insects, unfortunately my curiosity level is matched by my fear level. Let's just say, I don't go around trying to find bugs, but if there's one in the room I'm in, I probably know where it is, what it is, and its typical habits. I like to continually assess my surrounding for possible threats, and I keep a mental data base of insects I might encounter and what to watch out for when they're around. 

Expanding upon that topic: most of my close friends and family members know that I have a particularly large and irrational issue with flying invertebrates, especially the moth and butterfly variety. In my opinion they are great to look at when they're behind glass, as in outside your window, but otherwise they are, to put it bluntly, gross. Now you're probably thinking, "But Kristi, how could you not be amazed and overjoyed by these majestic and wonderful creatures?!" To that I say - Sure, it's all fun and games until you look closely at what those wonderful and majestic wings are attached to. Every butterfly has a disgusting, squirmy, hairy segmented body, and I have a hard time looking past that flaw. To prove my point even further, I've created a short comic strip so that you can see the world through my eyes.

I'm glad they're around to pollinate my flowers and add ambiance to a summer evening, but please, I beg of all butterflies - DO NOT LAND ON ME!