How To Get Rid of Crickets

Crickets can be a serious problem if you have a yard space with well-maintained lush lawns. These black- and brown-coloured insects that look very similar to grasshoppers are a common sight around the world. While the poets of the 1800s found these orthopteran insects fascinating enough to pen down poems about them, having them as your housemates is surely an infuriating sight. Firstly, crickets can be very noisy with their loud chirping and they are also known to cause serious plant and furniture damage. Field crickets, ground crickets, tree crickets and ant-loving crickets are just a few among the many existing species of crickets. House crickets have a great appetite for fabrics and carpets. House cricket, a very commonly found variety reproduces indoors and thus it is important to get rid of them at the earliest. If you hear sounds of crickets in the middle of the night or if your furniture or fabrics look chewed off, it’s a sign that you have a house cricket infestation. 

Do Crickets Bite?

Crickets are small to medium-sized creatures, light yellowish to brown in colour. About 3-4 inches in length, they have antennae larger than their body. Even if a cricket attempts to bite a human being, its jaw won’t succeed at breaking past the epidermis. It is rare that cricket will actually be able to puncture through one’s skin.  If a cricket does bite, out of self-defence, sanitizing the bitten surface with an antibacterial cream is recommended. The fact that they do not usually bite human beings, doesn’t make these insects harmless. Crickets carry multiple diseases which they can spread through their bite, physical contact or faeces. 

What Attracts Crickets

To get rid of crickets and prevent an infestation, it helps to know what is attracting them to your house in the first place. Crickets are usually found outdoors but in the colder winter months, they make their way indoors for warmth and shelter. If you are wondering what else attracts these bugs to your home, read on: 

• Crickets incessantly feed on the grass to fabrics. So, if you have a lawn or an unmoved pile of clothes, crickets can definitely find their feast. Crickets are also attracted to fabrics like wool, silk, cotton and leather.
• Crickets always look for a spacious spot that can offer them food, water and protection from their predators. A yard with a lawn is the perfect spot for them to nest, hide and reproduce. 
• Old logs, piles of unattended stuff, and tools in the garage all are spots that attract crickets to hide and stay within. Cluttered spots with mess always attract all kinds of bugs and insects. 
• Another common thing that attracts crickets to your home is bright lights. If you have outdoor lighting in your garden or in the yard space, it is an easy way for crickets to get in. Lights navigate the crickets from outside to inside the home. 
• Crickets need a lot of moisture so if you have leaky pipes around the home, crickets will be attracted there. The moist surface provides a perfect environment for them to breed. 

How To Get Rid of Crickets in House?

The excessively overused proverb, “Prevention is better than cure” stand true even with regard to crickets. Crickets are attracted to stench and garbage. Changing garbage bags on a daily basis along with frequent cleaning of the trashcans can be the starting point of this preventive measure. Here are a few things to do to get rid of crickets: 

• Crickets are drawn towards moist, watery and damp spaces around your home. You will need to clean the marshy areas and let space for the water to flow. 
• Outdoor lighting can also be changed to drive away crickets. If you have flashy, attractive lighting, replace them with yellow lights or sodium vapour lamps. 
• Mow the lawn and regularly trim the grass, clear out the weed plants to prevent them from housing crickets. 
• Crickets make mushy and moist places their abode of choice, so just in case, you suspect a cricket infestation in your house, double check the insides of your cabinets, the soil bed of decorative house plants or dig through the compost heap to look for their presence. 
• If one suspects an infestation of crickets in the house, regularly vacuuming the rugs, carpets and open surfaces of the house is advised. This practice will help get rid of cricket eggs. Though crickets lay eggs in hundreds at once, it takes a long while for the eggs to hatch and for the little ones to mature. This just means that even if you do a thorough weekly vacuuming, you will be able to destroy the baby crickets as well as their eggs efficiently. 
• Always use dehumidifiers to maintain moisture levels in closed rooms and cupboards. Portable jar-sized dehumidifiers are easily available in the market. 
• If there are any ripped windscreens in the house, it is best advised to seal and repair the cracks and gaps. This would block the entryway for the crickets. 
• Usage of sticky traps and boric acid-based repellents may help in destroying the cricket infestation. 

How to Get Rid of Spider Crickets?

Among the many types of crickets that we usually have around our home include field crickets and spider crickets, also called camel crickets. While crickets are commonly identified with a chirping sound, the spider cricket variety does not chirp. Spider crickets are found in dark damp areas like the basement or storage area of a house. Camel crickets are also fast at reproducing, so if you have an infestation, you need to address it quickly before it becomes a major problem.  The methods to get rid of spider crickets are very similar to the common house crickets. 

• Seal all the openings that can prove entry points for crickets into a home.
• Regularly clean your garage, basement and lofts. Clear out excess debris that can serve as hiding spots. 

• One common homely remedy to get rid of spider crickets is to fill a bowl with soapy water and place it near the infestation. The spider crickets will drown in the soapy liquid.
• A natural solution that can help is making a mixture of neem oil or cedar oil with water and spraying it on the crevices in basement walls. 
• Some home improvement stores do have sticky traps to catch pests. You can get such traps and place them where you see these bugs. Try to cover more ground with spider crickets as they are not easily identified. 
• If nothing seems to be working or crickets are finding a way back into your home, then it is best to rely on professional exterminators. They have experience in marking the hiding spots and eliminating the insects for good.