Stowaway in My Suitcase
[On returning from an inter-species adventure in France and finding I had a stowaway...]
I’ve never been much of a fan of the creepy crawly club – I’ve certainly never got close to anything with six or eight legs except in nightmares. But ten days after returning to England (doing some the Very Overdue Unpacking) I found a member of the Orthopotera family in my suitcase. It was wrapped in my green sarong perhaps mistaking it for lush grass.
And it was alive! How remarkable to have survived? It was paper thin, brownish in color and waved its long antennae as I picked it up and gave it water from a teaspoon. It drank it immediately…
I fell in love with a dying cricket.
Discovering she was a female I named her ‘Intrepidina’, given her intrepid nature. A cricket home was created and I spent too long watching her feed, slowly turning from a pale to darker brown (unaware at the time that this was a sign of her impending death). I watched her daintily eat a tiny piece of tomato.
I loved her for forty-eight hours.
The intensity was heightened by the fact it became clear she was dying. She was a tiny thing demanding my mothering…
I copied her actions, lifting what looked like a front arm and claw, unable to keep away. Her complicated eco-skeleton had me in awe. Make of it what you will.
And although you will say there was nothing in it and it was probably just some kind of reflex action, moments before she died, she lifted her arm in a gesture that to all intents and purposes looked like a wave goodbye. It’s universal movement of reaching out.
And my heart still gives a shrink of grief when it’s recalled, for something intangible passed between us.
#grief #cricket #inter-speciescommunication #love #dying