Crickets moving indoors is a genuinely seasonal pattern, not a random infestation — house and field crickets seek warmth and shelter as outdoor temperatures drop in the fall, and basements, garages, and ground-floor units are the most common entry points. Unlike many of the pests we treat, crickets aren't a health or property risk in the way termites or bed bugs are — the main complaint is almost always the noise from males chirping at night.
That said, a cricket problem that keeps recurring points to an entry point or a harbourage area indoors — a damp basement corner, a gap under a door, cluttered storage — that's worth addressing directly rather than just removing individual crickets as they appear.
Since 2006, Expert Exterminating has treated cricket intrusions across the five boroughs, and our approach reflects the lower severity of this pest: targeted treatment of entry points and likely harbourage areas, not the more intensive protocols we'd use for a structural or health-risk pest.
Signs you have a cricket control problem
- Chirping noise at night, especially from a basement, garage, or ground-floor room
- Crickets appearing indoors more frequently as fall temperatures drop
- Crickets found in damp, dark areas like basements, crawlspaces, or storage rooms
- Occasional fabric damage from crickets feeding on natural fibers in cluttered storage areas
- Crickets clustering near doors, window gaps, or foundation cracks
Why NYC sees this
Ground-floor units and basement apartments across the boroughs — from older buildings in ditmas-park to brownstone garden units in carroll-gardens — see the bulk of NYC's seasonal cricket calls, since these units sit closest to foundation-level entry points crickets use to move indoors as fall arrives.
Licence #15739 has covered this work since 2006, and we're upfront that crickets are a lower-severity pest than most of what we treat — the goal is reducing the noise nuisance and closing off entry points, not treating it with the intensity of a health-risk pest.