Not so lucky crickets.

Having a cricket eating beastie is tough in a place that celebrates Chinese New Year.

 Crickets are kind of sick, really.  Sick or cute.
 Not sure, but they don't smell cute.

Did you know, something magical happens during the 15 days of CNY.

Crickets become lucky.

So lucky, that they are unlucky to be sold.

Which either means you stock up on a zillion crickets before they are cursed (and unavailable), or your baby dragon starves. Oh, asking about buying crickets during that time is not recommended either.  :(

(Last year was rough, we had no idea.  Apparently, Grasshoppers are not lucky, btw, but not desirable to dragons either.  Meal worms are great for two days if you are starving, but then forget it.)

This year we were going to make SURE that our little dragon was not hungry.

She is a big Dragon now.

She NEEDS LOTS of Crickets.

Todd and I set out to find food for her.

Our normal 'supplier', which is over an hour from our home on 'Goldfish Street', was out...

We were running short on time, so we decided to go to the Bird Street.

I really dislike going to Bird Street.  They have the most magnificent birds in tiny crammed cages and it makes me really sad.

The journey does however take us through the Flower Market Street.
I love that place, despite the crowds.

I seriously loved all the Chinese New Year displays in the windows.

So creative and cute.

Even when the many people kept blocking my picture!

There are always unusual plants in the Flower Market.

I would have asked what these were, 

but wasn't feeling up to the challenge of trying to figure out the response.

 Do you know?

During CNY these little Clementine trees are seen EVERYWHERE! 

I LOVE the smell of the Flower Market.

I am pretty sure if there was a gauge to measure the scent of things in contrast - 

Flower Market would be the polar opposite to Crickets! 

The Flower Market literally leads to the gateway of the Bird Street. 

A cute, happy wall with a painting of free birds carelessly flying above flowers marks the entrance to the the bird street.  Slight irony in that painting. 

Reality: 

Oh, there are a couple 'free-ish' (chained to a perch) birds.
The rest are crammed in teeny, tiny cages with many friends.

Kind of reminds me of Goldfish in a bowl.

Well, despite the strong urge to set all the birds free, we focused and were able to find crickets!

We apparently bought 1400 of them!

Yes.  1400...  

You know what our flat has sounded like this CNY?

Like we should set up a tent!

We needed a container to hold all these little buggers (pun intended), so we set back to Goldfish Market street.

We found another cute little path to walk on.

I fell in love with the beauty of this tree:

We were successful finding an appropriate container, see below Todd is graciously caring it.

It was extremely crowded downtown, so Todd opted for braving the cars instead of the humans.

Totally safe. The cars hardly move at all anyhow.

Yes, I was there too, Hi!

All for the love of a cute little she-dragon!

For those in the US, next time you feel a little stressed about having to run back to that grocery store (or TARGET) for that one item you forgot for dinner, just think about how easy it really is and most likely everyone could speak your language too (if you couldn't find it)...   Perspective really...  

Bonus:  Red Streaks vs Blue Streaks

= s Amazing cuteness...