More Thoughts on Trapping Crickets -- or Not

Cricket advice continues to come hopping out of the woodwork. Readers have obviously given this subject a lot of thought, distilling their experiences with the detailed clarity of a battlefield after-action report.

I can't endorse any of these methods for committing cricketicide. I just offer them in the name of science.

Chemical Warfare

Boric acid does the trick, said Greenbelt's Leonie Penney. She had crickets in the basement for years, then distributed the white powder in "those places where the crickets congregate. The result is uncanny: No more crickets after years of infestation."

Following a recipe she cut out of the newspaper years ago, Joan Cocker mixes her boric acid with flour, a chopped onion, bacon drippings, sugar and a few drops of water, rolling it all into little balls of cricket death. "It was pretty miraculous," Joan said. "I still use it every year or so when I see one in the basement or garage."

Lyle Feisel of St. Michaels, Md., swears by a product called Golden Malrin Fly Bait. "My Iowa friend Arlo simply scatters it on the floor of his garage. I prefer to be a little more fastidious, so I make little pans out of aluminum foil (cricket buffets), put in a few grains of Golden Malrin and place three or four at strategic cricket crossings. Since starting the practice about a year ago, I rarely see a dead cricket and even more rarely, a live one."

It should go without saying that poisons are, well, poisonous. Also, I think everyone should have a friend from Iowa named Arlo.

Sundry Devices

Joan Arsenault of Arlington County thought that the do-it-yourself glue trap that reader John Moody makes from duct tape and vise grips is needlessly elaborate. "The vise grip is simply not necessary," she wrote. "Take the piece of duct tape, or the end of the roll, sticky side up, except turn the first inch down against the floor (I did this on my dryer because I wanted to find out what creature was leaving the, umm, droppings). Gingerly holding down the end you just stuck to the ground (so that you can unstick your finger), roll out the tape to the desired length, cut the tape if attached to the roll, and turn down this second end so that it, too, sticks to the surface and the tape is taut. It won't go anywhere. When I checked it out several days later I was greeted by several crickets, all standing at attention, feet planted firmly on the tape."

Charlottesville's Stella Erickson deploys an ultrasonic pest repeller. "I was skeptical but decided to try, and they really work! The crickets are gone!"

A Simple Solution

Forget that high-tech stuff, wrote Jonathan Coddington, an entomologist with the Smithsonian Institution. "One highly effective, cheap technique is simply a plastic utility tub half-filled with water," he said. "Basement cricket populations are water-limited. The water attracts them, they jump in and drown. Add a drop of detergent to break the surface tension."

Another benefit: After a while you've got cricket soup!

Live and Let Live

Or you could just do what Judy Brace of the District does: nothing. After trying for years to literally stamp out her cricket problem, Judy read "Broadsides From the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs," by Sue Hubbell. Hubbell writes: "Camel crickets are immaculately clean, harmless animals whose dearest wish is to be left alone . . . They come out at night to socialize and scavenge dead bugs or other things we have no use for. Entomologists call them detritivores: they tidy up the world for us." Apparently, their usual food is dead flies, spiders, moths and their own dead.

Says Judy, "In the basement, we each go about our business, and ignore the other."

And Finally . . .

Nancy Harding of Orange County, Va., had a non-cricket-related reaction to learning in my previous column that some people scatter osage oranges in the basement to keep away crickets. Writes Nancy: "I once read that scientists believe the weird osage orange was a favorite food of our now-extinct North American mastodons and mammoths. This always makes me sad when I see those weird green balls lying in the street; still growing, producing their fruit, which nothing, not even a hungry deer or bear, wants to eat. Just the mammoths and mastodons, now gone forever."

I wonder if someone set huge glue traps for the mastodons.

My blog, "John Kelly's Commons": voices.washingtonpost.com/commons. My e-mail: kellyj@washpost.com.