{"id":2234,"date":"2014-03-28T08:03:37","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T13:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=2234"},"modified":"2014-03-28T08:03:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T13:03:37","slug":"cricket-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2014\/03\/28\/cricket-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"Cricket Farming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seminolechronicle.com\/vnews\/display.v\/ART\/2014\/03\/19\/5329caec5cffa\">we acquired Goliath and Diamond Back as pets<\/a>, the boys have been diligently working to make sure they get enough fresh water, live crickets, and sunshine to keep them alive.<\/p>\n<p>The fresh water and sunshine are the easy parts.<\/p>\n<p>The crickets, unfortunately, have been dying at a prodigious rate. At first, the problem was water. If you put water in the cricket cage, they drown themselves. Instead, you have to use water pellets.<\/p>\n<p>We resolved the water issue was resolved, but still the crickets kept dying. Not only did that lead to hungry lizards (which apparently don&#8217;t eat dead crickets), but also costs money, and gives the cricket cage a truly noxious odor.<\/p>\n<p>This morning, my youngest solved the mystery. &#8220;Look,&#8221; he said, staring in at the cage. &#8220;They&#8217;re <em>on top<\/em> of each other. I think they&#8217;re crushing each other!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh yeah,&#8221; his older brother said. &#8220;The pet store lady said something about that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Didn&#8217;t you put in the toilet paper roll?&#8221; their mom asked. Apparently, they were supposed to have built a toilet paper roll tower for the crickets to climb on. Otherwise, they climb on each other.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Um. . .&#8221; the boys glanced at each other in a guilty sort of way, clearly looking for some explanation other than &#8220;no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Their mom waved at them. &#8220;Go do it!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now the cricket cage has a fancy toilet paper roll tower in its center.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m guessing that our next discovery will be that the crickets are leaping to their death off its top.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my old teachers, Mr. Woods, used to tell a story about working on a turkey farm. He said that turkeys were so stupid that they&#8217;d look up at the rain falling on their heads, open their mouths, and drown. Guess what? Crickets are even dumber than that. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-A2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}