I ordered a box of crickets from the Internet and it went about as well as you’d expect

Washington Post ^ | December 30, 2018 | Christopher Ingraham

[EdnaMode]

For Christmas this year, my family adopted a young bearded dragon lizard as a pet.

Our dragon, whom we named Holly, eats a lot, and the thing she loves to eat most is crickets (typically about 10 a day, in addition to other things like mealworms and vegetables). From the get-go, I knew that keeping an ample supply of crickets on hand would require some planning. We live in a rural area of northwestern Minnesota. The closest pet shop is an hour away, in North Dakota. Restocking our cricket supply would require a time commitment of at least two hours out and back.

By Christmas Day this year, Holly’s cricket supply was running low. I decided to order crickets online, which I had never done before, to save a trip to North Dakota. I bought the crickets from Fluker Farms, one of the more well-established online insect vendors (yes, these exist and there are a lot of them). I decided on a shipment of 250 crickets, which seemed like a reasonable amount for a lizard who is theoretically capable of gobbling up to 50 of them every day.

[jjotto]

My father used to put unknown objects on his dining room table where his wide variety of old-timer friends would explain what the objects were.

Live cricket traps for fly fishing bait were one of the hardest to identify objects.

[Hot Tabasco]

Seeing as how I keep snakes, I’ll answer the why.

Read the "whys" but never saw the following:

1. Love to snuggle

2. Fetch my slippers

3. Meet me at the door every evening when I return home from work.....

4. Play fetch the ball

5. Loves to bird hunt and a great pointer.

6. Great watch snake against home invaders......

[Flaming Conservative]

Wish I’d known you needed crickets. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d have to kill the biggest, weirdest looking crickets, in my house, you ever saw, every day! Now that it’s colder, I haven’t seen any more, but I know they’re lurking not far away....can I borrow your dragon?

[EdnaMode]

Yeah I enjoyed it. :D

[oldasrocks]

I prefer pet chickens. They lay eggs, follow me around and later make good chicken and noodles.

Had a pet pig too. He is in the freezer now.

[TangoLimaSierra]

Crickets are almost as fun as Guppies to feed to African Cichlids. The only problem is the Cichlids don’t like the legs.

Where do you find guppies with legs? - Groucho

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

At the Walking Guppy store stupid.

[Kartographer]

“Well Jiminy Cricket!”

[moovova]

“No bait shops in the land of 10,000 lakes?”

My question exactly.

[Rebelbase]

Ping for Bearded Dragons.

Being WaPo I don’t trust the story. Yeah, I believe the writer ordered crickets for the lizard but I think the ensuing chaos is fiction. But it makes for a good story.

[Tax-chick]

I think it’s probably been jazzed up for publication, but the general premise is realistic enough.

[M Kehoe]

Chocolate covered crickets aren’t that bad.

5.56mm

[hattend]

No fishing tackle stores near this town in Minnesota?

[libstripper]

6. Great watch snake against home invaders......

______________________________________

Reminds me of a python story I read many years ago. This guy had a pet python that he kept in his bathroom, where it usually wrapped itself around the shower curtain rod. One day a burglar broke into the bathroom, took one look at the snake, and dashed out.
ut.

[super7man]

We had a Horned Toad. Cute little guy. We captured him in Arizona. When we got him home and went to the pet store to get some Purina Horned Toad Chow, ran into a problem. The store owner said that new pet would probably die in about two weeks as it needed carpenter ants as about 80% of his diet.

Well, we had seen carpenter ants in the Santa Cruz mountains. About once a month I would head up into the hills with a shovel and cooler. I'd dig up a colony of ants and put it in the cooler. The ants were fine in the cooler doing their ant thing. They were also pretty aggressive so all we had to do to get them out is just put a little stick in their tunnel (I was going to say hole but decided there are too many FR smart alecks out there.) and they would swarm up the stick which could be dropped into the Horned Toad terrarium.

We had him for about 5 years. Nice little pet.

We still have him in a little box but he pretty flat now.

[Mark17]

We live in a rural area of northwestern Minnesota.

Hallock? I have relatives, that I think are still there. I assume you are referring to Grand Forks, ND? 👍

[bitt]

good story ping!

[grey_whiskers]

I will admit that I LOVED the feel of a friend’s Ball Python in my hands (that sounds dirty but it is not!) but I don’t get it, either.

You just got me in SEVERE trouble with my wife for uncontrollable snickering...

[grey_whiskers]

After reading this story, the only thing I can say is,

"Build the D@mn Wall !"

[EdnaMode]

Haha. Totally agree!