Around here, comes August, come the crickets.
\nLast year, I had an invasion of the little buggers in the basement, and I grew to hate their miserable chirping, amplified by the unfinished cement floors and walls.<\/p>
\nI set out sticky traps which caught a couple dozen of them, and I learned not to hesitate to stomp when I saw one, since they are fast and can jump respectable distances.
\nThis year, I keep forgetting to buy new sticky traps, but I have two new lines of defense: a heavy sheet of plastic between the bulkhead stairs and the basement, and my friends, the spiders.
\nTolerating my fellow web-spinners is a matter of professional loyalty, so I leave the Daddy Long Legs and their other arachnid pals alone, especially when they stay beyond nighttime biting range, like in the basement.
\nEvery morning and evening, I do a cricket inspection, and have stomped a few this summer, but yesterday was the best: a gigantic cricket was caught in the web of a particularly large Daddy Long Legs that lives by the bulkhead stairs.
\nReflexively, I demolished the cricket, but wondered afterwards if the poor spider had been collaterally damaged as well.
\nThis morning, I was happy to see the Daddy Long Legs alive and well, spinning another web. Good hunting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Around here, comes August, come the crickets. Last year, I had an invasion of the little buggers in the basement, and I grew to hate their miserable chirping, amplified by the unfinished cement floors and walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}