Crickets

I thought I'd feel like Vlad The Impaler, throwing live insects to a strange death every day. I thought my childhood love of The Cricket In Times Square (they don't hand out The Newbery to just anyone) would make me squeamish about sacrificing crickets to the Great Tongue. I thought it'd take some getting used to.

But then you bring them home and they rustle around making soft, horrible sounds, and they climb all over each other like the maggot/rice from The Lost Boys, and behave so loathsomely that you don't feel bad about chucking them into the ring to face the lions. Circle of life and all that.

The first night The Lizard came home, I had a tupperware container filled with crickets, egg carton pieces for them to hide in, and a whole lot of cricket food (looks like smaller dog food. who knew?). The problem with a tupperware container the size of a brownie pan filled with hopping insects is that there isn't a really easy way to open it up and get the few crickets you need. Attempting to prepare the little guy's first meal in his new home resulted in seven rogue crickets hopping around our kitchen (thanks for helping with the round-up, Trent).

I have since purchased something called The Kricket Keeper which is a clear plastic box, tall enough that the little creeps don't instantly hop out if you ever open the lid. There are two black tubes, open on the bottom and with a clear plastic lid on the top, which fit perfectly into two holes in the lid. Crickets, like evil people, prefer to live in dark tubes and so the moment they are in the box most of them crawl up into one of the tubes. The view through the clear lid down into the tube does not inspire.
All right, so a black tube can be pulled out of the lid (and a little trap door falls closed over the hole in the lid so escapees are thwarted). The right amount of crickets is easy to tap out, and then you slide the thing back in. So easy, and you don't have to lay a finger on one filthy cricket.


Did I mention that they cannibalize one another? They cannibalize one another.

They go from the kricket keeper into a tall plastic cup (so they can't hop out), where you dump vitamin powder all over them and shake them up till they are coated. Next stop is the cage floor. They aren't there for long.
Chameleons don't, as a rule, overeat. This means that it is conceivable that you may end up dumping more crickets in the cage than the little guy is going to eat. Further proof of their despicableness... any uneaten crickets must be removed from the cage before night falls, as they will torment and bite the sluggish and cold chameleon all night long. Nasty-minded insects and delicate geniuses don't mix.