How Do I Get Rid Of Cave Crickets In My House
Cave crickets are easily among the ugliest bugs you can find in your house. They look like miniature monsters, and finding them indoors can ruin even the best evening. You’re not alone if you’d do anything to get rid of the cave crickets in your house.
The best way to get rid of the cave crickets in your house is to lower the indoor humidity to between 30% and 40%. It also helps to set out glue traps in dark areas of your house, focusing on the corners of the room. Declutter your home and seal the entry points, such as door gaps, to keep them away.
Cave crickets can’t hurt you, but nobody can blame you if they scare you. Sadly, your cave cricket problem won’t fix itself. Follow along as we explore how to get rid of cave crickets in your house.
What Attracts Cave Crickets (& How To Get Rid Of Them)
1. Excessive Moisture
High indoor humidity can cause many problems, and pest infestations are among the most common of them. Cave crickets naturally linger in humid environments, like caves and in debris-dense patches of forest. If your home is overly humid, cave crickets will notice it and try to come inside.
That’s especially true if the indoor humidity level is 50% or higher, which is above the recommended level. Ideally, you should reduce your indoor humidity level to between 30% and 40% to deter cave crickets, spiders, and other bugs. You can lower the indoor humidity by using a dehumidifier and installing a vapor barrier.
It’s also important to inspect your plumbing fixtures and pipes for leaks, which can also attract cave crickets. These leaks can also damage your walls and flooring and contribute to mold and mildew.
2. Easy Entry Points
Nobody can blame you if your home’s entry doors, exterior walls, and windows have gaps and cracks. This is normal, and such openings form over time due to weathering and physical trauma. However, you will inadvertently invite pests, like cave crickets and centipedes, into your home if you don’t seal these openings.
Cave crickets can eventually grow big, but young cave crickets can fit through the tiniest gaps. The worst-case scenario is that cave crickets will enter your home, mate, and reproduce. This is less far-fetched than it may seem, so you must seal the gaps and cracks in your home.
The easiest way to do this is to inspect your walls and patch them with exterior-grade silicone caulk. Check your entry doors for gaps at the bottom, then install weatherstripping. This will keep cave crickets out, keep your house warm during winter, and reduce your energy bills.
3. Clutter
Like many creepy pests, cave crickets feel safest in dark hiding spots. Much like brown recluse spiders, cave crickets love houses with lots of clutter, as it protects them from predators. Such spots also help them hide and wait until they can find their prey in your home.
In the wild, cave crickets often hide under damp logs and piles of leaves. Indoors, cave crickets flock to anything that mimics such debris, including piles of clothes, old boxes, paper, and carpeting. Things get worse if your home is overly humid, as the cluttered boxes and paper may become damp.
This will further attract cave crickets, and you may accidentally create the ideal mating conditions for them. Even worse, clutter and moisture attract dangerous spiders, like brown recluses, as well as the bugs they eat. Declutter your home, or else you’ll wind up with cave crickets and brown recluse spiders, among other pests.
4. Poor Airflow
A cave doesn't exactly have the best airflow, which is why cave crickets prefer stagnant air. Stagnant air makes cave crickets feel comfortable, and it also contributes to high humidity levels. That’s why you’ll likely find cave crickets in poorly ventilated parts of your house.
That includes your basement, crawlspace, garage, and closets, where cave crickets often linger. You can make your home less comfortable for cave crickets by improving the ventilation. For example, you can open some windows to improve the airflow, as long as you have screens.
It also helps to run some box fans and install an overhead fan as needed. It’s also a good idea to ventilate your bathroom and run the fan for at least 10-15 minutes after showering. Otherwise, cave crickets will linger in your humid bathroom.
5. A Lack Of Threats
Cave crickets have plenty of predators and threats in the wild, but that’s not typically the case indoors. Everything from bats and spiders to scorpions, snakes, and lizards eat cave crickets. They can also die due to environmental problems, parasites, drowning, physical trauma, and old age.
Besides old age, most of these factors don’t threaten cave crickets indoors, unless you have lizards and spiders. Because of that, cave crickets can easily live long lives in your home, unless you do something about it. Of course, you probably don’t want to introduce predators to your home, no matter how badly you want the cave crickets gone.
However, you can trap them using glue traps, but you must be careful. For example, you can’t put glue traps out if you have small children and pets, as they can get stuck on them. Otherwise, you can place glue traps along your room borders, corners, basement, and crawlspace to ctch and kill cave crickets.
Are Cave Crickets Dangerous?
Cave crickets aren’t dangerous, no matter how scary and unappealing they look. That’s because cave crickets can’t sting or bite you, so there’s no risk of injury. Many people fear cave crickets, especially due to the way they aimlessly jump around.
As much as they scare you, they jump at you because you scare them. In some cases, they’re just trying to get away from you as quickly as possible because they perceive you as a threat. However, they may also try to scare you away as a first instinct, even though they can’t hurt you.
This purely defensive mechanism is quite unnerving, but you’re not in any danger at all. That said, you may still want to keep an eye out for cave crickets while walking around the house. Pay attention to dark corners, which are where they typically linger.
Summing It Up
You’re most likely to find cave crickets at night, as they’re most active when it’s dark. Cave crickets can sometimes lose their sense of time when they’ve been trapped indoors for a long time. However, they can still perceive light and darkness, and they become more active when it’s dark.
Cave crickets are mostly active between spring and fall, but they can stay active all year indoors. That’s especially true if you don’t do anything to deter them, as they can continually reproduce. Your problematic cave crickets will stay active as long as they have food, water, and humidity.
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Nick Durante is a professional writer with a primary focus on home improvement. When he is not writing about home improvement or taking on projects around the house, he likes to read and create art. He is always looking towards the newest trends in home improvement.
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