Black Cricket
When my subdivision was built four years ago, they converted a few hundred acres of lakefront ranchland into streets, houses, and parks for the kiddies. They also displaced a lot of wildlife to do it. What this means in practical terms is that if you live in an urban apartment, you have no idea what kind of monstrosities will casually wander into your home.
This black cricket is one of the tamer specimens of “intrusive native fauna”. As long as they don’t get into your bedroom you really don’t even notice them as they really don’t seem to do any damage. They don’t gravitate towards the pantry, for instance. If they do get into your bedroom, however, you’ll know it, because as soon as you turn out the lights they are in a warm, dry, dark place and to a cricket that means it is time for lovin’.
Crickets in a closed room are unbelievably loud. I mean, we’re talking 80, maybe 90dB of sound here. Not painful, but not ignorable by any stretch of the imagination. Imagine somebody in a minivan in the closet honking the horn, or the smoke alarm going off in the hallway. You will get up and ransack the bedroom looking for it.
And you know what’s fun? As soon as you turn on the light to look for it? It shuts up.
Until you turn out the lights again and try to go back to sleep….
AJ said,
November 21, 2007 @ 2:16 pm
I didn’t know crickets even came in black.. It’s like a ninja, and just as hard to find, apparently
David Brady said,
November 21, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
Hehe, yeah. I would make a joke about them being lethal killers and whatnot, but the reality is that they are distinctly a prey species. I mentioned the problem of them being in the bedroom. The reality is you really don’t want them in the house at all, because another displaced species, Lycosa rabida, will come in after them.
I have been on the lookout for one of these spiders ever since I started this site but I just haven’t seen one this year. Maybe next Spring.
SamWibatt said,
November 21, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
Kawaii!
James said,
November 22, 2007 @ 10:01 am
My wife suggested pet geckos, let loose in the house, but she’s weird like that…
Then again, we have wild geckos here, and she sees them as a cure-all for any bug problem. “And they’re cute!” Her words, not mine.
Steve Jackson said,
November 22, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
Geckos outside are horribly cute. Geckos inside are a nuisance. They leave little spots of gecko droppings on the walls. And unless your house is a total bug-haven, they can’t find enough to eat, and they starve, and eventually you find a pitiful emaciated corpse in the corner of a room.
AJ - Where are you posting from? Both where I grew up in Oklahoma, and here in Austin, you can have crickets in any color you like as long as it’s black. I have seen drab brown ones in pet stores, but the ones that swarm outside are all black. What color are yours?
AJ said,
November 24, 2007 @ 7:34 pm
Steve — I live in AZ, and I only ever see crickets in the drab brown variety. There was one in my friend’s house the night after this post, in fact, and it kept evading him so we kept calling that one a ninja cricket, too.
I guess since our dirt is drab and brown, it’s better camouflage for them?
Beth said,
November 27, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
The other problem with living in black cricket country is cats. My cats *love* the crickets that get into my apartment. But they won’t eat them. Just pull one back leg off and leave the poor thing to die. So I wind up finding lots of cricket legs and cricket bodies, just not in the same place.
sigh.
Anon420 said,
March 9, 2008 @ 7:16 pm
I had an entirely different problem. Living in Texas, about once a year we suffer from an absolute FLOOD of these annoying things. Usually the birds manage to take care of many of them… but they are just smart enough to seek shelter indoors from their predators. They are NOT smart enough to figure out how to get back OUTSIDE to eat. So in any large building, around mid to late summer you have literally PILES of starved cricket corpses that you have to sweep out.
On top of that, they like to get into my apartment. However, I’m a night owl, and like to leave all my lights out while I surf and play games on the ‘net. Unfortuantely, crickets are attracted to my computer monitor… so I’ll be deep in Oblivion, in a dark, dank dungeon, then suddenly something will smack me in the back of the head with a loud buzzing noise, crawl in my hair for a few seconds as I scream and flail, then fly away again and crawl into some little nook I can’t find, while I try desperately not to have a heart attack.
Yeah, I hate these little things.
David Brady said,
March 9, 2008 @ 10:17 pm
Anon420: This is now my favorite cricket story! Thanks!
Insect Picture of the Day » Giant Water Bug said,
July 10, 2008 @ 7:01 am
[…] still as can be, with its buddies nearby, waiting patiently under a floating rock for the crickets on top to fall in the […]