Stop Letting Crickets Into Your Charlotte Home

At any given point, there are probably a dozen insects in your house that you don’t know about. Yet, you can easily fall asleep without worrying about them. Even if you see a spider or cockroach at some point during the day, it probably won’t keep you up at night. But have you ever had a cricket outside your window? Inside your window? Or even caught in an air vent? Now that will keep you up at night. (Yes. Unfortunately, they’re nocturnal). To avoid this nuisance, and take back your peaceful sleep, finding out a little bit more about crickets might be the key to keeping them out.

The Cricket Problem

When crickets get into your house, they cause a myriad of issues. Of course, there is the chirping. It will keep you awake at night, but did you know that it’s only the males making that noise? As a mating call, males will chirp at night to attract a mate, and repel your sleep. To make matters worse, once this mating call is successful, female crickets can lay more than 700 eggs per year.

Now, once an infestation becomes significant in size, you’ll begin to notice other damage around the house as well. Crickets will chew and rip all sorts of fabrics: your linens, clothes, towels, etc. Plus, they create a lot of carpet damage, which can quickly take a toll on your wallet. Once you start seeing holes in fabrics and carpets, you know the infestation is out of hand, which will lead to increasing problems.

Enough crickets in your home can lead to sickness and disease, as they are well-known carriers of bacteria. They’ll crawl out of the damp, dark places they’re hiding during the day to spread diseases all over your food prep surfaces and furniture at night. The thought of that might just keep you awake at night even more than the chirping.

Proper Prevention Techniques

Noticing cricket activity in your home can be difficult because they typically stick to low-traffic areas: dark corners, basements, under appliances, laundry rooms, etc. However, once you begin noticing signs, it’s almost too late to do anything about it. Your first mission should be sealing all of the entry points in your home. Finish sealing and caulking all windowsills, along with weather stripping the doors.

Another common area on your property where crickets will congregate is around your outdoor lighting fixtures. Since these lights might be right outside your bedroom window, it almost sounds like the loud chirping is right above your bed. To avoid crickets congregating in these areas, you can adjust your outdoor lighting fixtures. If there is no vertical area on the fixture for the crickets to hang out on, they’ll probably find somewhere else. You can also turn your lights off outside before bed if the problem is getting out of hand.

Now, like with most things, when you try to prevent cricket activity on your own, you’ll get mixed results. So let’s review. Crickets in your home can cause:

• Insomnia (because of the loud nightly chirping)
• Disease (because of the bacteria spreading)
• Costly damage (because of their affinity for chewing holes in fabrics)

With all of these risks on the line, why would you leave cricket prevention to chance? The best way to keep crickets out of your home is with an ongoing relationship with the professionals - Aruza Pest Control. Their friendly pest technicians have been keeping Charlotte residents satisfied and pest-free for years, and they’d love to make you next on the list. Call today for a free consultation.

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