Man accidentally releases 250 live crickets in his house, hilarity ensues

Who hasn’t accidentally unleashed a real-life biblical plague in their home before, really?

Chris Ingraham is a reporter for The Washington Post and on Twitter recently recounted quite an amazing tale involving a shipment of live crickets intended to feed the bearded lizard he adopted. To be sure, Chris’s recounting of the incident that unfolded is quite good, and quite funny, but we all know it’s the stuff of nightmares too. Ingraham’s cricket tweets have since gone viral.

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It all started when a FedEx delivered a box full of live crickets. It being the first time he’d done such a thing, and much to all our eventual delight, Chris had no idea what he was in for.

So, a shipment of crickets for the lizard arrived via FedEx today. It was my first time ordering bulk crickets off the internet, and I naively assumed that they would be in like, a bag or some other contraption to facilitate easy transfer to another container. They were not.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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The result of Chris opening the box of crickets, with no prior knowledge of what to expect, had about the kind of result you’d expect. At least if you were writing a sitcom pilot in the 1990’s for TGI Friday.

They were in a cardboard box. And I cut the tape and opened the box and SURPRISE! Crickets everywhere. It was the middle of the workday and I didn’t have time to deal with cricket logistics, so I put the tape back on the box.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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He even gave some forethought into where he might able to stash the box of crickets away from the rest of his pets and his children until he could figure out how to deal with all of them.

And then I put the box in the upstairs bathroom, the only semi-contained place in the house where I knew the kids and the cats and the dogs wouldn’t be able to get at the box and tear it open and unleash 250 hungry crickets into our warm, semi-humid environment.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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That is definitely not how it all worked out though. Because very soon after stashing the crickets, all Hell broke loose and a plague was unleashed upon the Ingraham home. To add a little more drama, Chris may have forgotten to brief his wife about the cricket sitch.

About 20 minutes later I’m back at work on my computer, and I hear my wife in the kitchen: “where are these goddamn crickets coming from.” I freely admit I had not kept her fully up-to-date on my cricket purchasing plans.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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With the benefit of hindsight, this was a mistake.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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Chris knew he had to put a pin in the story he was writing and help his wife in the kitchen. He tried to explain things to her, but she was not in need of expository information at the time.

I’m trying to wrap up a story but I keep hearing cricket-related exclamations coming from the kitchen. Eventually I get up to investigate. I say, “So uh the crickets got here toda–”
“I REALIZE THAT,” she says. “WHY ARE THEY ALL OVER THE KITCHEN”

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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The next few tweets are some of my favorite in the whole story. They read like a scene from The Simpsons. You know, when it was still good and stuff?

Crickets on the floor. Crickets on the walls. Crickets in the sink. Crickets in the toilet.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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For some reason my first instinct is to flush the toilet, as if that will do anything to solve the problem of crickets in all the other places that were not the toilet. I shut the door. “Uh, don’t come in here!” I try to sound cheerful.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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He figures out he must not have sealed the box as tightly as he should have. Ingraham rushes out into the snowy cold and grabs an aquarium, spending the next 45 minutes collecting them. In another great moment, he realizes that not everyone in the house is terribly bothered by the reliving of Exodus in his home.

Of course by this point many had migrated elsewhere. They were in the closet. In the shoes. Making their way downstairs to the playroom. The cats were having what I can only imagine was the greatest day of their lives.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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Chris then plays the “shittiest” Pokemon game of his life and tells us that even hours later, they were still finding random crickets.

I tried to collect all of them. It was like the world’s shittiest game of Pokemon. But here we are, roughly 10 hours after the initial catastrophe, and stray crickets are still turning up in odd places.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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Sadly, Chris didn’t get any pics or videos of the event, though. However, he had a pretty funny way to put a button on the whole thing in his observation about his lack of both. What a fun story, for people not terrified of terrifying things.

To all you monsters who demanded photos of the infestation: believe it or not, while a horde of crickets was marauding through my house I did not think to whip out my phone and start snapping pics

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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But I’m glad you all enjoyed our suffering, we’ve been laughing our asses off at your responses all day which almost makes it all worth it. To my new followers, I look forward to disappointing you in 2019.

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) December 29, 2018

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Chris wrote about his hilariously harrowing night in a piece published in The Washington Post.

Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram, but not Twitter because he has a potty mouth.

Animals

Man accidentally releases 250 live crickets in his house, hilarity ensues

By James Schlarmann

January 02, 2019

It all started when a FedEx delivered a box full of live crickets. It being the first time he’d done such a thing, and much to all our eventual delight, Chris had no idea what he was in for.

The result of Chris opening the box of crickets, with no prior knowledge of what to expect, had about the kind of result you’d expect. At least if you were writing a sitcom pilot in the 1990’s for TGI Friday.

He even gave some forethought into where he might able to stash the box of crickets away from the rest of his pets and his children until he could figure out how to deal with all of them.

That is definitely not how it all worked out though. Because very soon after stashing the crickets, all Hell broke loose and a plague was unleashed upon the Ingraham home. To add a little more drama, Chris may have forgotten to brief his wife about the cricket sitch.

Chris knew he had to put a pin in the story he was writing and help his wife in the kitchen. He tried to explain things to her, but she was not in need of expository information at the time.

The next few tweets are some of my favorite in the whole story. They read like a scene from The Simpsons. You know, when it was still good and stuff?

Chris then plays the “shittiest” Pokemon game of his life and tells us that even hours later, they were still finding random crickets.

Sadly, Chris didn’t get any pics or videos of the event, though. However, he had a pretty funny way to put a button on the whole thing in his observation about his lack of both. What a fun story, for people not terrified of terrifying things.

It all started when a FedEx delivered a box full of live crickets. It being the first time he’d done such a thing, and much to all our eventual delight, Chris had no idea what he was in for.

The result of Chris opening the box of crickets, with no prior knowledge of what to expect, had about the kind of result you’d expect. At least if you were writing a sitcom pilot in the 1990’s for TGI Friday.

He even gave some forethought into where he might able to stash the box of crickets away from the rest of his pets and his children until he could figure out how to deal with all of them.

That is definitely not how it all worked out though. Because very soon after stashing the crickets, all Hell broke loose and a plague was unleashed upon the Ingraham home. To add a little more drama, Chris *may* have forgotten to brief his wife about the cricket sitch.

Chris knew he had to put a pin in the story he was writing and help his wife in the kitchen. He tried to explain things to her, but she was not in need of expository information at the time.

The next few tweets are some of my favorite in the whole story. They read like a scene from The Simpsons. You know, when it was still good and stuff?

Chris then plays the “shittiest” Pokemon game of his life and tells us that even hours later, they were still finding random crickets.

Sadly, Chris didn’t get any pics or videos of the event, though. However, he had a pretty funny way to put a button on the whole thing in his observation about his lack of both. What a fun story, for people not terrified of terrifying things.

That is definitely not how it all worked out though. Because very soon after stashing the crickets, all Hell broke loose and a plague was unleashed upon the Ingraham home. To add a little more drama, Chris may have forgotten to brief his wife about the cricket sitch.