My terrarium used to be a 20 gallon fish tank, but my fish died and I wanted to try something new. I made a lovely planted terrarium and introduced a house gecko I found wandering around in my dad’s office. I added some crickets for him to eat, all was well…and then the house gecko escaped. And the crickets started breeding like crazy, and then it was just a blare of noise, day and night (the terrarium is in my room) In hind sight, the situation sort of reminds me of Vuvuzelas in the world cup.

Anyway…so it was driving me crazy, so I took the terrarium outside, removed all the plants and rinsed all the dirt off their roots, pressure washed all the rocks clean, put my spider in a jar, removed every bit of soil from the tank(and what seemed to be thousands of crickets of various sizes). I bought a bag of miracle grow potting soil instead of digging up soil from the garden. I reconstructed the terrarium (it looks perfect now). All was well.

This was about two/threeish months ago. I woke up this morning to the sound of a cricket in my terrarium, chirping away Bzzzziiizzzzzzzizzzzzzzzzzzzzzziiiiizzzzzzzzziiiiii. WHAT!?! Where did it come from?! I don’t know. I thought I had removed all the cricket infested crap. I would tear appart the terrarium, but Miss spider had babies a month ago, so she and about a dozen of her growing little ones inhabit the tank and I love how the tank looks.

How do I get rid of this cricket, or however many there are without taking appart my terrarium again?(seems to be few, because the soil isn’t crawling with the unholy presence of them and their spawn…yet)

Bonus question: how on earth do you think this cricket got in there? The tank does have an open lid, but it’s on a 5 foot book case, has glass sides that don’t have wires or anything that could be climbed.