There are assassins amongst us. Since 2016, someone or something has been fucking with our diplomats in Cuba. These diplomats have reported being on the receiving end of “sonic attacks” that damaged their hearing, as well as caused dizziness, pain and ringing in their ears. The phenomenon has baffled researchers and investigators, leaving them unable to come up with a definitive source of the attacks, until now.
Recently, scientists analyzing a recording of the noise heard by the diplomats during a sonic attack discovered that the source of the sound was none other than the Caribbean cricket. I don’t know about you, but this new development has blown my mind. Here we’ve been blaming the Cubans for surreptitiously attacking our people for nearly three years when it was crickets the whole time. Thankfully, our unfounded accusations haven’t lead to another Cuban Missile Crisis, but we are still left with the problem of the crickets.
So, why do these crickets hate our guts? One hypothesis is that crickets hate us because humans hated them first. Crickets have heard people yelling at them for their eerie chirping for millennia. They know we hate it when they get into our houses and make their gross cricket noises or when they ruin our peaceful evenings outdoors. Crickets are aware of how much we hate all of these things and they do them to spite us. Perhaps this is all payback for our prior mistreatment of them.
Now that could explain why these crickets are attacking our diplomats to Cuba, but the fact that crickets are spiteful assholes doesn’t explain why they focused their ire on only the U.S. diplomats in Cuba. Americans are not unique in their mistreatment of crickets, after all. Perhaps these Caribbean crickets are communists, out to crush those capitalist pigs from the United States.
These crickets do live in Cuba after all, one of the few communist countries left in the world. On top of that, crickets bear a striking resemblance to the proletariat. For example, crickets work for the common good of all crickets and not for individual gain. These commie crickets may be mad that the capitalists are encroaching on their land with their diplomatic compound and trying to influence their political ideology. It’s like the Cold War all over again!
If it’s not a problem of political ideology, then maybe it has something to do with the fact that crickets are so jumpy. Those bastards never sit still when you walk by or try to pick them up. Crickets seem to be overly paranoid about the things humans might do to them, and if they think we are out to get them already, they are sure to let their survival instincts kick in. In this case, that survival instinct may have taken the form of “buzzing,” “grinding metal” sounds and “piercing squeals” that the diplomats heard during the attacks.
While the reasons for the cricket attacks may remain unclear, one thing is for sure: We have to do something about it. Last I checked, this was America, Jack, and we don’t take guff from anybody, least of all a bunch of punk-ass crickets. We aren’t going to let those chirpy bastards get away with what they’ve done to our diplomats. It’s our turn to return that volley.
Unlike our opponents, we aren’t despicable insects who attack without warning. We may be vengeful, but we are still civilized. That’s why we need to approach this diplomatically before we engage in combat. Our first step should be to retrieve the spokesbug for all crickets, Jiminy Cricket, from his basement cell at Walt Disney Studios and use him as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the crickets. If Jiminy fails to be a conscientious guide to his fellow crickets and negotiations break down, we go to Plan B: frogs.
When I was a kid, my sister came home one day with a small plastic terrarium and two tiny green tree frogs. I don’t remember much about these frogs except for one detail: these frogs loved them some motherfucking crickets. The frogs would have happily munched away on crickets all day if we had been willing to continue replenishing their supply. Of course, we couldn’t do that for all the reasons that a sane person wouldn’t want a house full of crickets, but we could use this information to help alleviate our Cuban Cricket Crisis.
If and when diplomacy fails, we are going to need to be ready to make a stronger response. My guess is that a couple C5 cargo planes filled with tree frogs to drop around the U.S. diplomatic compound in Cuba ought to do the trick. If my sister’s terrarium was any indicator, our cricket problem shouldn’t last long after that. Then all we have to do is figure out how to get rid of the frogs!
**This column first appeared in print on page 7 of issue #283 (Jan. 16 – 30, 2019)**
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