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Carr’s Crickets Get People Hopping

Here’s a sample of what readers had to say about Steve Carr’s Nov. 2 column, Home Invasion: It’s cricket season where I live (Vol. xiv, No. 44).

Those crickets do eat things. If there is a soil on upholstery, it may become a hole, and I watched one nibbling away on bacon and peanut butter I had in a mousetrap. The crickets ate the traps clean but didn’t set them off. And yes, they do chirp inside, too.

Being willing to share the outdoors happily with all sorts of critters, but not feeling so generous with the inside of my house, having had raccoons and squirrels some years past, I laid out strips of duct tape, sticky side up of course, and soon found them covered with the leggy creatures.

Your description was oh so accurate, but your tolerance level and sense of friendliness are well above mine. Crickets love my house but are still not really welcome here.

—Ardath Cade

It has happened to me, too. The crickets live in the basement, in the cat box. I feel bad for the cat. I am sure it is hard to go when there are critters jumping and singing in your toilet.

— Jamie Bridges

I enjoyed your commentary on camelback crickets. You are not alone. They live in dark, damp places, like my garage and basement, and other places when they get lost. How do they get upstairs into the bedroom?

They survive on mold and mildew. If you’ve got dirty clothes on the laundry room floor, don’t for a minute think they won’t live under there, too. Yes, they also eat fabric. I think they’re even cannibalistic. Ever leave one on the floor after you’ve killed it, come back a few hours later and found it gone?

—Terry Galloway

The batmobiles don’t bother me. It’s the other ones, the sprickets (short for spider cricket) that I can’t stand. They jump at you when they see you coming, not because they’re deadly but because they’re dumb.

I had a couple hundred of them in my 10-by-10 shed. Imagine them all jumping around when you walk in.

— Chris Moore

I used to have chickens, about 20 of them, and God knows how many thousand crickets on my .916 acres. Boy, those were some happy chickens, grazing all day on the cricket population! I think they must have eaten 10 or 20 pounds of crickets in any 24-hour period, yet there were always more! Those chickens gave really good eggs.

—Ric Dahlgren