How Can I Get Rid Of Crickets In And Around My Home?

GETTING RID OF HOUSE CRICKETS

If you’re seeing crickets, the more serious predators are sure to follow. Especially if you are seeing them inside your home, you’ll want to get rid of those crickets, fast.

Here’s what not to do:

Don’t empty a can of Raid on those creepy crawlers. Sure, you’ll drown the ones you can see, but their friends will simply sidestep the chemicals when they come out of their hiding places.

Here’s what to do:

Getting Rid of the Crickets Outside

A better strategy is to find out where the crickets are hiding and lure them out with a granular food bait that will trap them. You also can use sticky traps or concoct your own traps using a jar(s) containing some water and molasses.

Another option: crickets live in voids, like under those decorative boulders in your yard, in your sprinkler system’s valve box, or under the sidewalk and patio. Anywhere there’s a space between the ground and another object, you’re sure to find crickets. They also love moist, cool hiding places.

If you find a nest and spray it with a pest spray, be prepared to watch what looks like a river of the bugs pour out of it. More than 1,000 crickets can cram into one tiny nest.

Once they’re gone, fill in that void with dirt or expansion foam, which you can buy at any home store.

Getting Rid of the Crickets Inside

Part 2 of that strategy is to keep the chirping pests from getting inside in the first place. Crickets may seem like benign little creatures, but they’ll eat through everything from wallpaper glue to wool to silk. They’ll also attract hungry scorpions and spiders.

To keep crickets outside, you have to make sure you seal cracks and gaps around your home.

One place you’ll find crickets for sure is around your home’s foundation, especially in that gap between the stem wall and the stucco. Use a product called a home seal—it’s a spray-on foam that helps seal the gaps that allow bugs like crickets to walk right into your home.

Use a mirror to look for large gaps under the bottom of the stucco, especially around the corners, and fill them in.
Sealing gaps in the foundation wall itself also will stop scorpions and other pests from coming indoors.

While you’re sealing holes, search for other places where critters can come into the home from outdoors, the roof line and entry points for plumbing and electrical connections, for example. Trim bushes and tree branches so they don’t hang over the roof and drop bugs in places where they can crawl through crevices and into the attic.

Even holes in window screens or a gap between a door and the floor are invitations for pests to walk right into your home.

To the best of your ability, create a barrier anywhere where insects could get in out of the sun. If you do that, you’ll naturally bring your pest population down.

If this seems like a lot to keep up with, and admittedly it is, it might be worth considering hiring a professional pest control company to do it for you. These firms supply monthly preventive treatments, using better and longer-lasting chemicals than the ones you can buy at a home store, and trained professionals to find the pests for you, before they take over your home.