The other day I found a cricket in the kitchen sink. It looked like one of the feeders for my remaining praying mantis, but I keep those in a sealed plastic container. I thought perhaps it had escaped when I was dumping them into the cage and I didn’t notice. I grabbed it with my hand and dropped it in with the mantis.

Then I went back to the sink to continue what I was doing and there was a cricket in the sink! Did I not catch it? Then I saw another, which was definitely not a good sign. I opened the cabinet where I keep the cricket container and the lid still appeared to be screwed on, but there was frass outside the container and the cabinet stunk a bit. I took a closer look and found the problem:

holes chewed by crickets

They can’t normally climb the inside of a container, but I guess the bit of egg carton that came with the crickets was tall enough that they could jump up onto the underside of the lid and chew their way through the paper. From there they climbed around inside the cabinets or fell onto the counter. I had an empty pot sitting out and there was a cricket in it; I had a plastic container on the counter and there were crickets in it; I had a metal bowl on an upper shelf and sure enough there was a cricket in it:

escaped cricket in bowl

I don’t know how many got out, but it’s been four days and I’m still finding them. I noticed the cat poking around a corner of the basement this evening, and there was one that got under the baseboard before I could catch it and more stuck in a trap nearby. Thankfully they’re too small to chirp and drive me nuts. They’re also less gross than the larger/older ones – I had tried a batch of “large” crickets when the mantis got big enough to handle them but immediately went back to “medium” because of the mess and the unbelievable stench.

I appear to also have a surprise colony of dermestid beetles (I assume dermestes maculatus) hatching in the gravel at the bottom of the mantis cage. I guess it makes sense considering that I put a bunch of half-grown larvae in there about 6 weeks ago and have seen some adults crawling around. I found an adult outside the cage today. Hopefully it was just a one-off that escaped when I opened the cage at some point, and not an indicator that there is a way they can escape on their own.