Crickets, Singing Crickets -- Where to find them in Seattle
August 14, 2012 7:09 PM   Subscribe

We, my tenants and I, have been buying crickets from Prtvo and letting them loose in the flower beds so as to provide a summer night's ambiance for our urban courtyards. And it works, after a fashion. But pet store crickets intended for iguana maws are not the singingest of crickets. They chirp. Which is OK but...

Apart from Liem's Pet Store in the alley down in Chinatown aka the International District, which I intend to check out in the next few days -- they had none last year when I checked -- does anyone in the greater Seattle area know of a place that might sell singing crickets ?

Now I know most of you elsewhere find them a nuisance but up here in the Pacific NW, they don't last that long outside or in, so that will not be such a problem.

So, if anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears.
posted by y2karl to Home & Garden (12 answers total)
 
You can get them shipped! From a surprising number of places actually.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:20 PM on August 14, 2012


Response by poster: Yes, thank you. This has occurred to me.

But I was hoping for an IRL bricks and mortar, chipboard and wallboard sort of place.
posted by y2karl at 7:23 PM on August 14, 2012


There's a couple of science-y environmental things you can try to do to elicit a louder, more frequent song from your crickets:

- Raise the temperature at ground level. Most crickets chirp at a higher rate the warmer the temp is. I have no idea how to go about this.
- Only get males. Their 'calling' chirp is the loudest of the four types of chirp, and is used to attract females to the area. I have no idea how feasible this is.
posted by carsonb at 7:31 PM on August 14, 2012


I know that your intentions are benign, but please don't release pet-store crickets into the wild. They may have a troublesome virus. And releasing nonnatives into the wild is not cool and can have rippling repercussions none of us can predict. Feral cricket colonies have survived in Southern California, and while house crickets don't seem to be technically invasive, they are a pest. Please rethink this plan.

(Oh, and for pete's sake, don't release crickets grown in Georgia into your Seattle backyard! Talk about disease vectors.)
posted by purpleclover at 7:33 PM on August 14, 2012 [50 favorites]


You could fake it too. You and/or your tenants could put on some cricket noises inside, open the windows, and turn it down to the appropriate level. Two or three of you do it and it should be suitably random. You can get those kind of cricket noise compilations at the library, or on the internets.
posted by carsonb at 7:34 PM on August 14, 2012 [1 favorite]


Just doing a bit of reading, what you want is probably field crickets (Gryllus pennsylvanicus) and what you're getting are house crickets (Acheta domestica).

Given Seattle's moist and temperate nature (you're winter record lows look like business as usual here) I'm kind of surprised that you don't see metric tons of crickets. Have you considered talking to people in a less urban environment and see if you can't get someone to run a cricket trap for you?
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:41 PM on August 14, 2012


You need to get in touch with Gideon.
posted by netbros at 8:16 PM on August 14, 2012


Why don't you download some cricket sounds and plug them into a cheap radio or something. It can't be a great idea to buy and release non-native species.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:24 PM on August 14, 2012 [7 favorites]


Listen to purpleclover. this is a bad idea, and the same effect can be much more easily achieved through other means that are less risky to nature and less costly to you.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 10:17 PM on August 14, 2012 [4 favorites]


PLEASE realize how irresponsible it is to be so cavalier with your local ecology and don't do things like this.
posted by FeralHat at 12:25 AM on August 15, 2012 [4 favorites]


Response by poster: I have received the information I wanted via email. Thank you all for your time and consideration.
posted by y2karl at 3:32 AM on August 15, 2012


Iguana don't eat crickets. They should never be fed anything other than greens and fruit.
posted by OsoMeaty at 9:16 AM on August 15, 2012


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