Borrowing the main metaphor from the Presidential election campaign, I’ve talked before about my pre- and post-emptive battle with crickets.
Like the war in Iraq, I am far from “Mission Accomplished”.
As in finding yesterday that I needed yet another line of defense.
Lacking a proper door between the bulkhead and the rest of the cellar, I’ve ducktaped a heavy sheet of plastic to the cement block walls.
This failed to keep the critters out, so I set up sticky traps on both sides of the door frame to the bulkhead stairs.
This didn’t protect the upstairs from crickets getting to the main part of the house, though (Bob found one, I found another a few days later), so I set up more sticky traps near the front door.
But even that wasn’t enough.
Yesterday, I laundered several items, including one that had been sitting outside for a couple of hours.
Then, when I went to take the laundry out of the washing machine, I found the carcass of a gigantic, drowned cricket in the bottom of the tub.
Thus, the currently deployed lines of defense:
– Heavy plastic and duct tape
– Feet, preferably but not necessarily with shoes
– Sticky traps
– Washing machine