Carnivorous Crickets of Colorado is the 36th book in the American Chillers series. It was published in 2012, and the author is Johnathon Rand. The cover artist is Dwayne Harris, and the cover layout and design is by Sue Harring
Main Characters and Side Characters[]
The narrator is Kendra Delaney and her friends are Kierston Cooper and Bryan Hatfield. Other side characters that appear in the story are the Carpenter Brothers.
Storyline[]
The story begins when Kendra Delaney, Kierston Cooper, and Bryan Hatfield decide to go hiking on a trail that goes through the forest. They come across two men that are moving into a farm house called the Carpenter Brothers.
The Carpenter Brothers take out a LARGE cricket from the semi truck, but it turns out to be a display. They explain to the kids that they are going to do experiments on the crickets and hopefully by summer be the largest cricket farm in the country, and most likely the world.
Then, something goes wrong.
After the school year, Kendra asks Kierston and Bryan to go hiking with them on the same trail. They are busy so she tells them to meet her there.
Kendra takes her cat, Spaceman, along with her, and he is freaked out by a raccoon. Then, he gets something real to get freaked out by. Something is stampeding through the forest, but Kendra has no idea what it is. And the barbed wire fence that goes around the Carpenter brothers' farm has been destroyed! It appeared to have been chewed through. Kendra decides to hide in the barn.
When the creature emerges from the forest, Kendra gets a good look at it. It's a giant cricket!! Then, there's a smaller cricket in the barn. This one is yellow and it hops out.
The cricket that came from the forest is battling another cricket and Kendra is terrified. That's when two kids voices are heard coming from the trail. Kierston and Bryan. Bryan's bike is eaten by the yellow cricket and Kendra runs out to help them. By now, Spaceman has already found a hiding spot.
Bryan and Kierston are gone now but they come back with weapons such as Rocks and Sticks. They save Kendra from the cricket and they run to barn. The house is locked so they make their way into a cellar. In the cellar it appears to be a lab and there's broken cricket cages.
The kids find a binder with all of the Carpenters' papers on their experiments. It says that they wanted to create hybrid crickets that could survive anything but the crickets got too big. So when one of the Carpenter brothers saw a cricket eating a deer, he didn't do anything. Instead, he ran to the cellar and wrote about it in the binder.
The brother explain that they would go down south to get some stuff that would kill the crickets. They said that the crickets would eat and get bigger so they LEAVE COLORADO, knowing FULL WELL that the crickets will get bigger the more they eat and they know FULL WELL that while they're gone, the crickets could hop out of the woods and into Aspen. They say they arrive today.
Then the kids hear tires and a smash sound. The brother are back! Bryan pokes his head out of the cellar and sees that their truck has been destroyed.
The kids make it into the house and find the Carpenter brothers. They tell them that there is stuff in the truck that they need to mix in order to kill the crickets. They knew FULL WELL that should should've mixed it when they were down south. They KNEW FULL WELL that they should have just boughten a gun in Aspen and killed the crickets.
Kendra makes it out the truck and gets the stuff and water grenades. Oh, I guess they did get guns. They make it to the house and mix the stuff. Then they run out and squirt the crickets. Then, they leave the farm and squirt the crickets they see. The crickets eat Kierston's bike and the Carpenters offer to buy new ones for them.
The children go home and realize that the Carpenters aren't as smart as what they thought they were. Then one day, Kendra meets a kid named Tony and he tells her all about The Underground Undead of Utah.