Crickets: Not the Band You Want in Your Scottsdale Home

Crickets: Not the Band You Want in Your Scottsdale Home

If you’ve ever had a cricket in your Scottsdale home, you know how annoying the chirping can be. It’s bad enough when they’re in your yard but when crickets are in your home, they can be quite the nuisance. Other than chirping through the night, the more than 900 species of crickets are not harmful to humans but they can reproduce quickly.

Chirping Isn’t Music To Your Ears

The sound you’re hearing is commonly called chirping or stridulation. While a few females chirp, it’s more than likely you’re hearing the sound of a male trying to attract a female by scraping its wings together.

There is a large vein that runs along the bottom of each serrated wing, kind of like a comb. The chirping occurs when the top of one wing is rubbed against the bottom of the other wing. The male crickets hold their wings open to make the sound louder.

Male crickets make sounds for four reasons. The loudest is the attraction song used to get the attention of females or to repel other males. The quiet song occurs when the female is close and the male is courting. They may also make a brief chirp after successful mating.

Fun Fact About Crickets

Having a cricket in your home isn’t ideal but you can make it fun. Most species of crickets chirp at a higher rate when the temperature is higher. This is known as Dolbear’s Law. According to the law, you can count the number of chirps in 14 seconds, add 40, and that is the approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Where to Find Crickets

You can follow the sound to find your cricket guest. Most likely they will be near their food – organic materials like plants, fungi, and seedling plants. This is why keeping property clean is so important – let enough dead plant material build up and you’re practically putting a welcome sign out for the crickets.

When these sources of food run low, crickets will eat sick or dead crickets.

They mate in the late summer and lay their eggs in the fall with the eggs hatching in the spring. That means if you saw crickets around your house at the end of the summer, you want to make sure you have service scheduled to ensure that their eggs don’t hatch in time for the spring.

One female can lay as many as 200 eggs twice a month. That’s a lot of noise.