Why do I have crickets in my basement

Adcadet

Adcadet

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So, I've now lived in my new (well, built in 1987) for ~3 months now. In general I really like it. Deck out back, now complete with some simple deck furniture and a second-hand but functional grill, is great. I love reading outside near sunset. I also really like having the space to move someplace when the wife makes noise, or vice-versa.
But...
Lately I've been finding black crickets in my basement. Like 3-4 per day, mostly in my bathroom and storage area. Why? did some mamma cricket give birth to a brood? Are they crawling in from somewhere? Do they come in from where ever and for some reason migrate to the cooler basement? I'm getting sick of killing them. At least they're slow. And taste good. J/K.
 
Maybe the crickets like your cooking.

About twice a year I fumigate our house. You can buy 'fogging' kits anyplace that sell RAID, DeCon or other pest killers. This seems to keep bug problems under control.

Bozo :joker:
 
We have spiders in our basement. They eat any insects that can somehow get in. Seems to work well enough except for having to clean out the spiderwebs once in a while.

We do get crickets in our garage. Thankfully we don't hear them inside the house.
 
Small numbers of small spiders (like Pholcus phalangioides) and ants are normal and you will never get rid of them completly. I have never heard of crickets in a basement though.

Fumigating is a good short-term solution but, if the crickets come back after you give it a go, I would talk to a pest control service to see if you can find out how they are getting in and what they are living on. There may be some holes or cracks that need filling or some food sources you will want to get rid of.

Do the crickets chirp at night? That would drive me freaking nuts! We get one in our garage once in a while but, like Fushigi, we can't hear'em in the house.
 
Get a caulk gun and walk around the perimeter of your house filling anything that resembles a hole. If the hole is too big for caulk then get that expandable foam, I have seen it at Home Depot or Menards.
 
Oddly enough, they usually don't make noise inside the house. There is at least one in the laundry room that I can't find that was chirping away last night. We have crickets outside the house as well that I can hear inside. Maybe I can hear the one in the basement, but I can't tell if what I hear upstairs is coming from inside or outside. It really doesn't bother me, and after living in Minneapolis for years it's better than traffic noise. I also like the sounds of birds outside. The cricket thing bugs me (pun intended) mostly because they vaguely resemble cockroaches from a distance, which I associate with less than clean living quarters.
 
As a kid, my room was in the basement and there were crickets. I rather liked them ...They will come in from outside. As long as they have food, water, and it is relatively cool, then they will thrive, but not normally breed.

If you don't want them, then there are Cricket control methods
 
P5-133XL said:
As a kid, my room was in the basement and there were crickets. I rather liked them ...They will come in from outside. As long as they have food, water, and it is relatively cool, then they will thrive, but not normally breed.

If you don't want them, then there are Cricket control methods
Click to expand...
GO GOPHERS!
Props to you for linking to my alma mater! Did you specifically search for crickets in Minnesota?
 
Field Crickets. Yup, that's what I've got. All males from what I can tell - the ones that make noise. I just went down stairs and killed two more. Interestingly, one of them was sitting about a foot away from bits of exoskeleton bits of another one, making me think that perhaps this cricket had just cannibalized one as they are known to do at times. That's one way of reducing cricket numbers, I guess.
 
And now, the crickets have water-front property: my basement flooded last night/early this AM. Nothing precious was damaged, but we'll have to replace at least a lot of the flooring downstairs.
 
Indeed, it was the rain. It seemed to have come in from at least 3 different spots in the basement, and a walk around the house during the rain did not reveal any significant problems.
 
Where do your downspouts from your gutters end up? If they terminate close to the house and you have room get some extensions so the water flows out well away from the foundation.
 
About 2 feet. Since this was the heaviest storm ever, at least in some places, I hope this never happens again. But I'll be looking for longer downspouts just to be safe.
 
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