The Lucky Cricket

The Lucky Cricket is singing again.

Last Saturday, when I walked into the lab, I found a 200ml flask on my bench, and there was a cricket in it.

Feng came up from his bench and explained:"I caught it on my way to the lab. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Yes, it was a very beautiful cricket. All black, shiny, and mysterious. A little evil-looking, too. Like Darth Vader.

"But," Feng continued,"it's very stupid. It just sat there for me to catch it. No intentions to jump away at all."

Yeah. I don't blame it. Who would have thought a 27-year old Biology Master student, who is a father of a one-year old son, would suddently jump into the meadow to catch a cricket in a beautiful Saturday morning?

I put it into a milk bottle with corn meal food at the bottom, the kind of bottles we usually keep our fruit fly strains in. Thus, it officially became our lab pet.

Feng showed it to everybody and everybody said:"Oh, a lucky cricket! Very nice!"

It seems happy in its new home. From time to time, it sings its happy songs. Not what you would expect to hear in a genetics lab. That's why people passing by would come in and ask:"What's that sound?"

Today the boss said:"It's so nice! It's like we are camping!"

Yeah. And last night when I was lying in my bed at home, I heard the singing of crickets from the meadow outside my apartment. For a moment I thought it was morning and I was in the lab, working.

The singing of the crickets somehow warped the time-space in my mind.

Maybe that was how Einstein discovered relativity.