Sea Girt, NJ Professional Pest & Termite Services

Recently, I was sent to a home in Sea Girt, NJ,  after Cowleys received a call from a homeowner who found herself with a cricket infestation inside her home, primarily in the basement. Upon arrival, I went into the basement to inspect, and observed a heavy presence of spider crickets, also commonly known as camel crickets, in the laundry room area of the basement. From a distance, these crickets resemble spiders or shrimp because of their gangly long legs and antennae. 

Spider crickets are much different than a few field crickets that periodically find their way into homes. Spider crickets usually congregate in large numbers, and you can find hundreds of them can be clinging to walls in basements or crawl spaces. It’s a scary sight, to say the least! Unlike field crickets, they don’t make that familiar chirping sound we hear when the males rub their ridged upper and lower wings together to attract females. Instead, spider crickets attract mates by emitting a smell. A word of warning: When alarmed or threatened, these insects often jump directly at the intruder. So, don’t get too up close and personal with them.  You may find yourself with a spider cricket firmly planted on your face — and they bite!

Because of their hump-shaped bodies, spider crickets (sometimes shorted to “sprickets”) are also called camelback, camel crickets (“criders”), or even “land shrimp.” These crickets are naturally found in caves, so they are also known as cave crickets. 

They are attracted to and thrive in enclosed dark, moist, and humid spaces. Basements, crawl spaces and garages can have a similar environment to a cave when there is high indoor humidity. So, you’ll often find them in homes with a mold or mildew problem because they feed off any fungi that grows on damp walls. Because spider crickets can be a sign of a mold problem, any home with a spider cricket infestation should be inspected for possible mold. Besides fungi, these voracious eaters will consume fabric, carpets, cardboard, dust, plants, and even each other. 

When dealing with a spider cricket infestation, I’m always interested in the moisture conditions causing infestation, so that the problem can be resolved long-term. Here, the laundry room had finished walls and was very dry. However, the rest of the basement was unfinished with concrete block walls. Also, there was a French drain around the perimeter of the unfinished section to drain water away from the foundation into a sump. Although the unfinished part of the basement was fairly dry, there was still plenty of moisture for these crickets to thrive. 

In resolve this infestation, I treated the French drain and walls inside the basement and also performed a perimeter treatment around the exterior foundation of the home as well as under the exterior siding. However, because a spider cricket problem is an indication of high indoor humidity levels, the long-term solution is keeping down moisture levels by installing a commercial-grade dehumidifier. There are multiple benefits to dehumidification: By keeping your basement dry, you remove the conditions for mold to form, improve the air quality of your home, and make the area much less inviting for spider crickets and other invasive insects and pests. Hopefully, this homeowner will consider dehumidification.

This week I was called to a home in Sea Girt, NJ that managed to have two different stinging insect infestations going on at the same time. Both a yellow jacket nest and a baldfaced hornets nest had formed on the property. Baldfaced hornets are actually a type aerial yellow jacket. Both of these predatory wasps are highly aggressive and very territorial. If these insects feel you are intruding on their nest, you are in for a world of hurt! Yellow jackets, with perhaps the worst reputation of any wasp, have distinctive alternating yellow and black stripes that have us instinctively running in the opposite direction. Baldfaced hornets are larger wasps with distinctive white markings on their face and abdomen. 

The baldfaced hornets nest was built on a branch of a tree on the property. It was active for awhile and had grown to the size of a basketball. These wasps build their nests at least a few feet above ground in trees, shrubs, and sometimes on the sides of buildings, especially under eaves. I was not about to take any chances being stung myself, and put on a protective suit. I treated the nest with an aerosol and then a dust. After there was no observable insect activity, I removed the nest from the tree. The yellow jackets had built their nest in crack of house foundation. Yellow jackets typically build their nests inside wall voids, holes in the ground, or other similar openings they can squeeze into like the nest here. These insects managed to find a big enough void in the home’s foundation to build a nest. I treated the void with a highly effective dust to kill the yellow jacket colony.