This is Chester's bad ass cousin from Connecticut.

Remember that wonderful children's book, The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, you know, the one about the talented chirping Connecticut cricket named Chester who endears himself to NYC?

His freakin' cousin is in my basement and is driving me crazy. He started chirping about three days ago and I can't for the life of me find that little, loud-mouthed sucker.

In one of those hyper-mother moves when my children were young, I had the door and adjoining wall leading to my basement removed so that I could keep an ear out for my kids while they were playing downstairs.  As they got older and a whole lot noisier, I had wished I had the door back, but then in high school, I was happy it was gone because if it got too quiet down there, I knew it was time to bang around some pots in the kitchen or descend the stairs with one of my famous unannounced appearances.

In any event, once again I am regretting not having a door as the incessant chirping can be heard all through my house.

I went down there with the vacuum cleaner and gave the basement a more than thorough sweep. I moved everything away from the walls, stopping to listen for the chirp. I sucked up more lost legos, barbie accessories and snack food crumbs than I could have imagined. The chirping stopped so I assumed that the bad ass cricket was swept up in the crap.

The next morning, while I was having my coffee, he started chirping again. Just as loud and JUST AS  ANNOYING.

I went back down to the basement and listened for the exact location. It sounded like it was coming from the electric baseboard heater. I kicked it a couple of times and the chirping stopped. I kicked it again, hoping to scare it back to where it came from. Silence. Sweet silence.

Back upstairs and threes sips into my coffee, the cricket came back with a vengeance. Then a light bulb went off in my head. If I turn on the baseboard heat, he'll have to move or he'll burn up.

I skipped back downstairs and turned the dial to 10. Over the chirps I warned, "You have about 15 seconds to scram you little shit or you'll be toast".

The smell was something similar to a loaded electric bug zapper. I panicked. Had I wiped out an entire colony of crickets? The guilt was tremendous and for a second, I felt bad that I had flipped out over some annoying chirping. I turned off the heat and went upstairs to open the kitchen windows. The stink had traveled through my first floor. While flipping the diffuser sticks in the family room, I heard the chirping again.

It sounded like "You MISSED me, you MISSED me".

What I wouldn't give to slam a door right now.