Johnny Loses It

Ten hours into their regular 24-hour tour of duty, Station 51’s A-shift crew had been called upon to help battle a brushfire that was raging out-of-control in Diablo Canyon.

Eight exhausting hours later, 51’s firefighters were ordered back to base camp, for some mandatory ‘down time’.

The fatigued—and famished—firemen finally reached the staging area and staggered through the lantern-lit chow line.

Captain Hank Stanley stopped to hold a brief ‘bull session’ with a group of his peers.

51’s guys balanced their drinks upon their metal plates and one-handedly unbuckled their sweat-soaked canvas coats. The crew spread their jackets out on the steep slope’s damp ground and then carefully dropped their dragging asses down upon them.

The hungry men’s midnight meal was consumed in both total darkness and complete silence.

The firemen quickly finished eating and set their empty plates aside. Then they leaned back and propped themselves up on their elbows.

The completely-spent fire crew stayed right where they laid, staring silently down the damp, dark hillside.

Chet Kelly could feel something crawling up his pant leg. He banged his left boot heel against the ground a couple a’ times, in a feeble attempt to dislodge the pesky intruder.

Suddenly, from somewhere just off to their right, a lone cricket started ‘chirp’ing.

Their buddy’s absurd, completely out-of-the-blue, question caused John Gage to crack up.

His shiftmates knew that, once Johnny got going with ‘the giggles’, there would be no stopping them.

“I don’t ever recall reading any reports of any ‘cricket maulings’ in any of the local papers,” Roy DeSoto reassured the questioner. “However, one named ‘Jiminy’ might jab you with his umbrella.”

Sure enough, the blond paramedic’s witty—er, downright silly reply caused his partner’s giggling to intensify.

Chet gave his boot heel another annoyed stomp. “Something is crawling up my left pant leg, en route to the ‘family jewels’, and I figure it’s prob’ly a cricket.”

Marco Lopez’s helmeted head swung in his unseen chum’s direction. “Chet, you wouldn’t know a cricket, if one did bite you—in the ‘family jewels’.”

“I do so know crickets!” Kelly insisted. “I’ve seen them—up close and personal. They look like little black grasshoppers.”

“Oh. So, it’s only little ‘black’ grasshoppers that you have an aversion to,” Mike Stoker insincerely surmised. “You hear that, guys? Kelly is a bug bigot.”

Their engineer’s light comments caused John Gage, and everybody else within earshot, to chuckle—delightedly.

Other guys began gravitating toward the sound of the laughter, like moths being drawn toward an open flame.

Stanley saw the commotion his crew was creating and exchanged grins with his fellow captains. “Sounds like the ‘kiddies’ may be getting a little out of hand. Excuse me, gentlemen,” the fire officer begged off and began heading up the hillside himself.

The men Hank worked with were a ‘fun-loving group’ and, well, he didn’t want to miss out on any of the merriment.

“Hey, Cap!” Stoker greeted Stanley, as their fearless leader’s silhouetted form gradually appeared above them—er, below them. “Were you aware that Chester B., here, is a bug bigot?”

The Captain removed his damp turnout coat, draped it over the even damper ground and then dropped down onto it, to sit beside his ‘goofy’ guys. “Can’t say as I was,” the grinning fire officer was forced to confess.

Marco’s helmeted head swung back in his unseen pal’s direction. “So, how did you happen to come to know crickets—up close and personal?”

“My niece Alexandria’s project for the Science Fair was to determine which conditions are conducive to ‘cricket song’,” Kelly explained.

“Ali’s only eight,” Lopez promptly pointed out. “I should think that it would a’ been enough of a project just for an eight-year-old gi-irl to ‘capture’ a cricket.”

“That was the easy part,” Kelly determined. “Turns out, crickets can be purchased—by the dozens—from most any pet store.”

“From the pet store?” the blond-haired paramedic repeated, sounding somewhat baffled.

“Hi,” Lopez immediately piped up. “I’m Marco, and this is my pet cricket, Fluffy.”

“They’re not sold as pets,” Chet chided. “They’re sold as food for pets.”

“What kind of a pet consumes crickets?” Roy wondered, sounding more confused than ever.

“Spiders…turtles…snakes…lizar—” Chet began to list, only to be interrupted.

Marco was anxious to hear about the rest of his chum’s ‘up close and personal’ cricket encounter. “Okay. So, that was the easy part. What was the hard part?”

“Well, my sister Annie doesn’t ‘do’ bugs. And my brother-in-law was out of town—on business. So I kind a’ got talked into helping Ali with her science project. I tell yah, you haven’t lived, until you’ve spent a hot, humid evening sitting around a backyard pool with a whiny eight-year-old and an aquarium full of crickets and dry ice.”

Kelly grinned and quickly continued his narrative. “Hour after hour passed, without so much as a single ‘chirp’. You’ve never seen such uncooperative insects. We even wrote the crickets a couple a’ songs. So they’d have something to sing, should the urge arise.”

“But, midnight arrived and all there was to show for it was one soundly-sleeping eight-year-old and a bunch a’ cricket-cicles. It was pretty obvious that ‘conducive’ conditions had not been met. Which meant another trip to the pet shop…and another evening sitting out of doors around the pool…waiting for the crickets to begin serenading us. This time, we used regular ice cubes, instead of the dry ice. And we added a relative humidity gauge to the thermometer and barometer. Turns out, crickets sing to attract the chicks. At 67 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 degrees Celsius, a cricket will produce 20 to 30 short, metallic rasps—at around 4 per second. Each series of notes lasts about 5-tenths of a second, followed by a 5-second rest period. So it’s: sing five seconds…pause five seconds…sing five seconds…pause five sec—”

“—All right,” Gage interrupted the lecturer, with a giggle and a grin, “now you’re really beginning to scare me.”

“You scoff,” Kelly conceded. “But, if a ‘cricket’ category ever comes up on ‘Jeopardy’, I’m set! And, here’s the really interesting thing, the rate at which crickets sing varies with the temperature. For instance, the higher the temperature, the faster they sing.”

Kelly’s audience continued to just lie there—silently. His fellow firefighters were both stunned and amused by the Irishman’s impromptu lecture.

“Crickets hear with their knees,” Mike Stoker suddenly, and solemnly, proclaimed.

The engineer’s solemn proclamation sparked a whole nother round of hearty laughter.

Hank swiped the tears from the corners of his mirth-filled eyes and contemplated whether or not the conversation could possibly get any more ‘off the wall’.

“How did THEY ever come to that conclusion?” DeSoto asked, sounding extremely dubious.

“That’s easy,” Lopez insincerely replied. “The scientists who were studying the crickets noticed that they were wearing little kneephones, instead of little headphones.”

“So-o, let me guess…” Gage urged, once the latest round of laughter had died back down. “You and Ali got an ‘A’ on your science project, and the crickets signed a five-year recording contract with a major record label. Ri-ight?”

“Ali did receive an ‘A’,” Kelly conceded. “However, I’m afraid that there was no lucrative record deal for the crickets. I had visions of driving out to some remote locale and releasing the crickets to a few choruses of ‘Born Free’. Alas, kids these days are much more practical. Ali gave the crickets to her friend Cal, and he fed them to his Iguana.”

The firemen found their friend’s account of the crickets’ fate extremely amusing.

“What’s really cool about crickets,” Professor Stoker continued on, undaunted, “is that you can actually tell the temperature—Fahrenheit, by adding 40 to the number of chirps in a 15-second period. Crickets also like to sing in harmony. When the scientists yanked the crickets’ legs off, they couldn’t harmonize anymore. That was when THEY realized that crickets must hear with their knees.”

The dark-haired paramedic was now laughing harder than ever, but was still able to maintain some semblance of composure.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Hank quickly determined. “You prob’ly wouldn’t feel like singing either, if some sick, sadistic scientists came along and yanked your legs off.”

That was when Johnny completely lost it…right along with every other fireman that happened to be within hearing range of Captain Stanley’s comment.