A really creepy post-Halloween story

Once upon a time, there was a family of five who lived in a well-loved, 40 year-old house in the woods. They loved the trees and the stillness and the falling autumn leaves. Their neighbors were kind and friendly and there was absolutely no danger of any kind.

Except...

...for the deadly crickets!!!!!!! They were deadly because they made no noise; they only crept up silently until they were close enough for you to see their eyeballs, then they would jump! Unpredictably--you never knew where to turn, or to run! They had an uncanny sense of knowing how to jump exactly where you didn't want them to--which usually resulted in human-insect contact--and which filled the hearts of each family member with extreme fear and loathing (especially the mother).

These were no ordinary crickets--no, besides their silence, they were a mottled brown color and I believe some call them "spider crickets"--the best of both worlds, right? These crickets were especially revolting because they had the tendency to spontaneously lose one or both legs in the midst of their frenzied hopping around--leaving them lying, quivering, on the floor, unable to move again (legs lying sadly nearby). Now I happen to know that the laundry room in this particular house is located in the basement, and that the sole light for this laundry room is a naked light bulb on the ceiling which must be turned on by pulling a very short chain. The mother had become accustomed to walking VERY carefully each time she entered this room, for each day would bring a few new cricket casualties on the cement floor (which were vacuumed up). So, crickets in the laundry room--no big deal, they could all deal with that. (The father would have to fetch them when they jumped into the washer, though.)

However, this particular autumn, something strange was going on. Overnight, it seemed, the crickets had increased tenfold! The cricket encounters began to occur several times a day--not only in the basement, but in the kitchen, dining room, living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms! The worst was just today, when the father, innocently putting on his slippers after church, felt a sickening C-R-U-N-C-H. Remember the scene from Laura Ingalls Wilder's books where the grasshoppers just march in the house and walk over everything, then head back outside--like the house wasn't even there? Well, this perhaps wasn't that extreme--but the family began to realize that this was SPIDER CRICKET COUNTRY: they were here first and they are not moving out. Other neighbors seemed to be similarly afflicted--and they have been seen in the stake center where the family attends church.

So....bad news: this story is obviously true, and.....good news, come winter, they will all be dead. (The CRICKETS, not the family--whew.) May we have a cold, long winter, and if not, I completely understand if you can't make it out to visit us.