Cricket noises... is this common?

trentv

Hi! The last couple of days there has been very loud cricket noises coming from somewhere in my kitchen, but i never thought crickets would naturally live in Ireland, do they?
Otherwise would anyone know the best way to capture them or how long they live? Or where they might come from?
I have been listening intently to my fridge for ages (nice image) and the noise just bounces off all the walls making it impossible to locate the bugger.
If their lifespan is only a couple of days then thats grand i'll let nature take its course but if i'm in for weeks of chirruping i'd rather put an end to it.
Thanks all... anyone with a similar experience?

The_Minister

I've heard crickets chirping before (and one little bigger actually jumped onto me). They do live here.
Personally, I don't find the noise annoying, so I'd just wait.

hadook

Thankfully one of my cats is fascinated with them and hunts escaped crickets down for me and eats them We had an entire tub of gecko food escape just before Christmas & I think it took her about a week to get them all so I'd hazard a guess that they live at least that long.

The noise the crickets make does my head in after hour seven or so. If it gets really irritating I'll send Mao Cat around

The Artist

actually i think its cockroaches as they are like crickets only smaller? i thought that crickets come from hot countries?

Reku

Well I know you can get either crickets or grasshoppers in Ireland (had loads of them in some fields in Cork when I was a kid, think it was grasshoppers) and they do make that chirp noise. I'm afraid that if that experience was anything to go by they have an adult lifespan of at least 2 months.

trentv

So, although this will not help my situation i think its quite a cool story.

Last night before i went to sleep i decided to try an experiment with my new cricket-lodger. I got some UV reactive paint and lay a little pool of it across the cracks under my presses in the kithcen (where i figured he was living).
This morning my wife told me the chirping noises had stopped, so armed with a UV torch i went to the kitchen and shone it on the paint... and there in front of me I can see his little footprints glowing in the light, walking straight out of the kitchen and fading away.
So from this i only gathered that he had come out and that he had walked through the trap, I thought perhaps he had drank it and been poisoned or something and went about my business.
Then I go into to the laundry room to get a towel and Click Click Click CHIIRP CHIIRP CLICK CLICKL!! Arhghghg, the little bugger had just moved house!

Still, the experiment was definitely worth it to see the footprints marching across the kitchen... only i'd prefer him in the kitchen then hiding in my laundry

<-shudder->

artieanna

trentv wrote: »

So, although this will not help my situation i think its quite a cool story.

Last night before i went to sleep i decided to try an experiment with my new cricket-lodger. I got some UV reactive paint and lay a little pool of it across the cracks under my presses in the kithcen (where i figured he was living).
This morning my wife told me the chirping noises had stopped, so armed with a UV torch i went to the kitchen and shone it on the paint... and there in front of me I can see his little footprints glowing in the light, walking straight out of the kitchen and fading away.
So from this i only gathered that he had come out and that he had walked through the trap, I thought perhaps he had drank it and been poisoned or something and went about my business.
Then I go into to the laundry room to get a towel and Click Click Click CHIIRP CHIIRP CLICK CLICKL!! Arhghghg, the little bugger had just moved house!

Still, the experiment was definitely worth it to see the footprints marching across the kitchen... only i'd prefer him in the kitchen then hiding in my laundry

<-shudder->

Sorry I just had to laugh, good detective work:D:D:D