"Frick-it" These Crickets

Still hunting crickets....

                            ....and not having a lot of success....

Out of the 36 that escaped, we have caught maybe 10.  The crickets are in every room of our house, except amazingly Spencer's room, where they originated from.  Suppose they know they were going to be lunch for the turtles? 

At night the chirping is incredible.  It may still be like winter outside (we got 4" of snow today), but inside my house it sounds like a warm summer night.  Hey, people pay big bucks to have this kind of ambience.  The majority of the crickets seem to be congregating underneath my stove and refrigerator.  Mike pulled out the bottom drawer of our stove in an effort to see them.  The only thing he found was dust bunnies, magnetic letters for the fridge, and the long-lost mommy for Sammi's dollhouse. We have caught crickets in the bathtub, the laundry basket, and in the potty chair.  Let me tell you, opening the lid and finding a cricket doing the backstroke in their potty, has done nothing to speed up the potty training process.  Arghhhhhhh....     

Since the great escape, Mike and I have been wondering a few things.  What is a crickets livespan, how quickly do they reproduce, what do they eat, and how the heck can we get rid of them?  So, this morning I did a search on the web....

The first bit of disturbing information I found was that crickets do indeed thrive indoors.  Crickets can feed on a wide variety of fabrics, foods and paper products. Cotton, linen, wool, rayon, nylon, silk and  furs are susceptible, along with soiled fabrics, sizing from wallpaper, glue from bookbindings, fruit, vegetables, meat and even other crickets.  Do you suppose I could train them to eat just wallpaper?  Hate the wallpaper in my kitchen.  : ) 

But oh, it gets better.... Each  female can lay an average of 728 eggs with the immatures (nymphs) resembling the adults except being wingless. Nymphs molt seven to eight times and reach adulthood in about 60 days. These crickets complete their life cycle by laying eggs in cracks, crevices and other dark areas such as behind baseboards.  What do you suppose are the odds that the crickets we had were all males? :::sigh:::

Mikey 2, calls the crickets "frick-its"...  I think it's a very fitting name, and these days "Frick-it these crickets" can be heard muttered quite frequently around here.  It's apparent now that just catching a few crickets here and there, is not going to solve the cricket problem we have.  But what to do?  Because we have small children and animals, we are very leery about using insecticides.  As an alternative, I found this on a website; gluetrap monitor, Gluetrap Monitor, GLUETRAP MONITOR, glue traps, Glue Traps, GLUETRAPS, glue trap, Glue Trap.  Hmmm, why couldn't this website just write glue traps once?  Anyways, hoping that these gluetraps do the trick. 

But now I'm wonderin'.....

How long will a cricket chirp while stuck to a glue trap?  :::shiver:::  Did I ever tell you I hate bugs?