But then, at second glance, I calm down a bit and think, “Oh, It’s just a cricket. At least it’s not a spider.”
I’m probably not the only one, either. However, if you’re thinking that crickets aren’t a threat to your home and health, then you might be out of the loop.
Crickets: More Than A Nuisance
Your typical house cricket in McKinney is usually just under an inch in length and tan/brown in color. Since they’re not all that large, they don’t immediately jump out to homeowners as a serious threat. However, crickets cause a lot of damage in homes and around the property as well.
Crickets will typically inhabit darker, damper environments like basements, but they can cause damage all over the house. You see, crickets enjoy feeding on the surfaces of various fabrics and clothes. This creates a severe threat to your carpets, linens, and laundry. When clothes are sweaty and sitting in some sort of dirty clothes basket, this will attract cricket activity. And, instead of creating small holes like a moth or mouse, crickets will create gaping holes, tears, and scratches on all sorts of fabrics.
The damage they’re able to create is even greater because of their group-feed mentality. With lots of crickets making significant holes and tears, the damage to your household fabrics can quickly become irreparable. Severe cricket infestations have torn up entire boxes of stored clothing, sheets, and blankets. And if you get a few crickets in your home, this can quickly turn into a significant infestation. Female crickets give birth to 700-800 eggs each year. If these eggs hatch inside your home, that’s an awful lot of carpet ruiners hopping around your house.
Infestation Indications
Since cricket infestations can be so damaging, it’s very important to recognize signs of cricket activity in your home before it’s too late. You should start looking out for cricket infestations as the seasons change and temperatures drop as they'll be looking for warmer places to winter over. As nocturnal insects, crickets will mostly come out at night and remain hidden in the darker, warmer areas of your home during the day. If you hear crickets chirping, that is the mating song of the male and a definite sign of infestation.
Holes beginning to pop up in fabrics, carpets, clothing, and linens is also a tell-tale sign. If the infestation is outside around the property, you’ll spot crickets near lighting fixtures at night, usually bunched up by the dozens. And, even if the infestation is outside, that puts a lot of your landscaping efforts at risk as well. Crickets will eat anything from insects to plants.
Proper Prevention Strategies
If you’re wanting to avoid a severe infestation, it’s going to be hard to do on your own. Most of the time, crickets will congregate in the low-traffic areas of the house, so you probably won’t see them very often. If you head down to the basement and open some boxes or drawers, you might see signs of them, but the majority of activity occurs while you’re asleep. If you don’t realize they’re doing any damage, you might not see them at all.
Because the damage is often undetectable until it’s too late, you don’t want to take chances on home remedies. The best way to keep crickets out of your home is with an on-going relationship with the professionals - Big D Pest & Termite Services. Their friendly pest professionals in McKinney can create a plan for monthly or bi-monthly home pest treatments to protect your home and health from pests of all shapes and sizes.