Oh Jesus the fucking crickets
A sudden flashback to my very first house share. There were three of us and we needed a fourth, so along came a girl from my friend's work. And along also came Oscar, her pet monitor lizard.

Oscar didn't get about much. He lived in a vivarium in the living room and ate the occasional defrosted mouse. He was attractive enough in his way but - fuck me, he was a big lizard, what more can you say?

Still, his owner wanted to do well by him and read somewhere that it was good for him to have the occasional live food. And apparently what he would really like would be some crickets.

It turned out that he wasn't that interested in living insects. They could sit on his nose and he'd ignore them. Sadly that was less of an option for us - a dozen chirping crickets in your living room are hard to tune out. And then the damn woman disappeared without warning or paying the rent - leaving us holding the lizard. Metaphorically but not euphemistically speaking.

It was all sorted out eventually, and our landlord was very understanding. But I'll never forget those fucking crickets.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 22:29, 1 reply)

Freaky.
One of my housemates wound up the "proud" owner of a corn snake in the same way. In lieu of rent.

Unfortunately snakes are rather tricky to exchange for goods and services.
(PerspexAvenger, Fri 27 Feb 2009, 21:24, closed)