Over the past few days, I have found three crickets on the second floor of our house, and these were not your garden-variety fluffy-bunny crickets but giant, mutant crickets that look like tarantulas or spotted zombies. The first one joined me, Norman Batesesque, in the shower; the second came ambling along the baseboard last night as I read before going to sleep. Both times, I summoned my fearless husband from the other end of the house to vanquish them, but he went all Captain Picard and set elaborate traps so he could release them into the wild. (“They eat bugs,” Rob said. “They are bugs,” I said.)

Early this morning, having pried my gluey eyes open, the first thing I saw was yet another, larger cricket monster in the same place as the last. “Crickets are good luck, honey,” Rob mumbled into his pillow.

“Yay, good luck. Get it out.”

After extended persuasion, fueled by my mounting panic as it came closer to the bed, Rob rolled to his feet, took a cup, and tried to trap it. This one, having learned well the lessons of its brethren, was not so easily caught, but it eventually exhausted its bag of tricks and was pinned down. Only after Rob threw it off the back porch did I notice something left behind on the carpet.

“What’s that?”

“Uh, its legs.”

“My good luck!” I shrieked, unspeakably devastated. “Um, do they regenerate?”

“I think so.” Rob carefully plucked the discarded legs out of the carpet fibers and threw them in the bathroom trash can.

At least it got us out of bed.

But now I’m worried about that stupid cricket, hoping both that it can survive, legless, in the wilds of our back garden and that it won’t hold any hard feelings against me. Maybe I’ll try to find it later and hand feed it the carcasses of some less-fortunate bugs as I beg it to forgive me.

I need all the luck I can get.