Tuesday, May 13, 2008

My kingdom for a carrot!

Qin Shihuang was the first emperor of unified China following the Warring States Period. He is also my pet. Sometimes I push bits of carrot through the bars of his cage and watch him hungrily stuff them into his mouth. Occasionally he will pause and look up at me, but I'm not really sure what he's thinking. I'd guess from the way that he twitches his antenna that he's happy.

Qin Shihuang is my cricket -- or perhaps my locust; we're not entirely sure. Des returned from a day trip with some students two weeks ago and told me that she had bought a present for me. "Cool!" I said. "I didn't realize you were going anywhere near the electronics market! How did you know what CPU socket to get?" "Ha, ha," she replied without apparent mirth. "Here it is!" She drew from behind her back a small wooden cage in which was what appeared to be a dessicated insect corpse.

"Is it glued to the bottom of the cage?" I asked, thinking that this might represent another of my wife's forays into traditional Chinese art (albeit a rather less beautiful one than I've become used to). Then the corpse rolled over and waved its legs in the air.

Apparently, she bought it from a cricket dealer. Cricket fighting is still something of a hobby among older Chinese men, and the passengers on the bus during her return trip to the school peppered her with questions about where she bought it and how much she paid for it, no doubt marvelling at this foreign woman's discernment in obtaining such a fine specimen of insectoid fury. I imagine that this would be rather like a good old boy seeing a sari-clad Indian matron climbing into the driver's seat of a NASCAR racer -- yet another one of our multicultural experiences.

I thought the name was suitably martial, but I haven't asked my students about the propriety of naming a simple insect after the founder of the Qin dynasty (and pretty much everything that came after). He came in a cute-looking traditional wooden cage, but it was pretty small, and Des fretted that he would wither away in it. "It's so tiny!" she wailed. "He doesn't have any room to move around!" "He's a cricket," I countered, "he doesn't even have a brain!" A fierce debate ensued about whether or not he did and did it even matter and crickets have rights too, mister. A few hours later we had established that A) crickets do indeed have brains, albeit small ones and B) we would be moving him into a suitably roomy new cage.

After some searching, Des discovered an old basket with a wire bottom that, when turned upside-down, provided a fine enclosure for the little conqueror. "He doesn't have anything to play with," she fretted after observing him for a few minutes. "He's bored. I need to find some toys for him!" Her first attempt to create a cricket playground consisted of a heavy ceramic teacup that she placed on its side. Though initially promising, this had two disadvantages: first, Qin Shihuang showed no interest whatsoever in it, and secondly, the cup rolled when the cage was moved. Des nearly crushed the poor guy to death the first time she tried to feed him. Her second innovation -- a plastic toy dug out of a box somewhere -- has been much more succesful.

So what does the cricket do, you ask? Well, mostly he sits there in his cage, staring vacantly into space. Maybe he's hungry. Perhaps he's meditating. For all I know, he could be contemplating suicide: If only I had opposable thumbs and a really small rope and vertebrae, I could end this torment! The only really interesting thing that he does is chirp -- so loudly, in fact, that we move him to another room when we're sleeping.

My guess, though, is that he's inherited a little bit of his namesake's ambition, and he's eyeing the rest of the room for his empire. After all, a new Qin dynasty has to start somewhere.

Dave

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