The Great Cricket Escape (Help)

[Romicron]

So today was the day I finally upgraded Pascal from 1/2" to 3/4" crickets (he's big enough to handle them now).

What I was expecting was larger crickets. What I was NOT expecting was nightmare difficulty mode in containing them.

I buy my crickets in bags of 100 from the reptile store. I have 2 cricket feeder cages. To be safe today, I put them both in my larger 15G bin while I poured the crickets out. One JUMPED out of BOTH bins - off of some egg carton, cleared the 10" tall bin and the 18" tall bin. Killed that one in short order.

While morning feeding, another one jumped to freedom and landed on mommy's sweater drying on the countertop. I can't dirty Mommy's clean clothes, so I tried to nudge it off, but it took two jumps and booked it under Pascal's cage (has 1" of clearance for UTH backup heating).

1 AM. I hear a scream from Mommy's home office. On the other side of the apartment from the feeding area. *EEEEEEEK*

"THERE IS A CRICKET IN HERE!!!!!!!!" Adult female. (Should I be worried about an egg sac somewhere?)

Great - that's the one I missed from before - or so I thought. Now the refrigerator is making new noises. At least if I hear it, it's a male and isn't going to start a household cricket colony.

First, how do I catch the little buggers when they escape? Second, how did that last one get loose? I don't recall any other escapees.

I think I may go back to 1/2 inch crickets just for convenience's sake and for my own audio sanity as these guys will not shut up.

 

[Romicron]

UPDATE: The fridge cricket moved From the fridge to our bedroom in the middle of the night. After moving some objects, we found it and killed it good. It's tough to tell, but it sounds like there might be one more loose in the kitchen.

 

[CooperDragon]

lol the joys of keeping crickets. I had a few escapees here and there over the years. I would try to track them down if I heard them. Otherwise I just didn't worry about it much. I think a few of them managed to survive for quite a while in my basement. They tend to be attracted to warmth so maybe set up a heat pad or heat rock somewhere with some food or water gels and see if they are attracted to it.

 

[kingofnobbys]

I feel your pain .... too bad you don't have a resident wild gecko or frog or skink in residence to hunt down those rogue crickets, they are great to have coming into the house on a regular basis and can become almost like a pet , very tame and friendly and downright cheaky ...LOL.

Crickets wont live long in the house without access to food. They wont breed in the house like rogue roaches will.

I've been using crickets are feeders for skinks and dragons for about 8 years and often loose one or two ( thumble fingers ) when feeding my gang.

 

[Romicron]

UPDATE: Found another one in my work bag later that night.

I put the container in a larger container with the lid closed and left it overnight. When I woke up, there was a cricket in the larger container, indicating that it had escaped from the smaller. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that there were some small holes in the lid of the container that a cricket may have squeezed through, so I taped those up. No other escapees since.