Crickets

• WHAT YOU SEE

A chirping you can't quite locate, coming from a corner of the garage after dark, or a cricket that jumps out when you move a box off the floor. They're more heard than seen most of the time. Once in a while one turns up dead on the garage floor near the door, drawn in and unable to find its way back out.

• WHAT WE SEE

Only the males chirp, rubbing one wing against the other to call in a mate, which is why the noise is loud but the source is hard to pin down. Crickets are drawn to light and to the gap under a garage door the same way mice are, and they'll ride inside on anything left near the opening: a bag of mulch, a stack of firewood, a cardboard box. Garages with a light left on and a door that doesn't seal all the way are the most common setup we see. They don't damage the structure, but a heavy population can chew at stored fabric or cardboard.

• HOW WE FIX IT

The same door seal and perimeter work that keeps mice out helps with crickets: closing the gap under the overhead door, sweeping the corners, treating the wall line where they're getting in. Exterior treatment around the garage foundation on the quarterly visit keeps the population from building up outside the door in the first place. Switching an always-on garage light to something on a timer or motion sensor cuts down what's drawn to the door at night. If it's a heavy year, we'll treat the garage specifically rather than folding it into the general perimeter pass.

• WHEN THEY SHOW UP

Crickets are worst from late summer into fall, when outdoor populations peak and cooling nights push them toward a warm garage or a lit doorway. They're not a winter or spring problem the way some other pests are. The garage is where we find them almost exclusively; a cricket indoors usually means the garage door to the house was left open at the wrong time.

• WHAT THE PROS KNOW

Only male crickets make the chirping you hear, and they do it by rubbing their wings, not their legs. A light left on over a garage door does more to draw a cricket population than almost anything else about the garage.