Crickets in the House? Why Late Summer Is Peak Season in Ontario (and How to Make the Chirping Stop)

Quick answer: Crickets move indoors across Ontario in late August and September because outdoor nights drop below what they can tolerate. The chirping at 2 a.m. is a male calling for a mate from somewhere warm — a basement, a utility room, behind a laundry appliance. Killing the ones you see does nothing, because they are entering through the same gaps mice will use in six weeks. The fix is an exclusion pass on doors, weep vents and utility penetrations, paired with a treated perimeter. A one-time interior and exterior insect treatment starts at $475, and every job begins with a $95 inspection, credited when you book the treatment. Call (705) 302-1887.

Why crickets come indoors right now

There is a specific week every year in Ontario when the calls start. It is not the first frost — it is the first stretch of nights in the low single digits, usually between the third week of August and mid-September, earlier in Simcoe and Muskoka than in downtown Toronto.

Crickets are cold-blooded. Through July they are comfortable in leaf litter, mulch beds and along foundation walls. Once overnight lows fall past roughly 10°C, that habitat stops working. They move toward warmth, and the warmest thing in the neighbourhood is the base of your house — sun-heated brick, a dryer vent breathing warm air, the gap under a garage door that has been leaking heat all summer.

Most do not intend to come inside. They follow a warmth gradient along your foundation, and if it leads through an opening, they take it. This is the same mechanism that drives spiders indoors in September and mice indoors in October. Crickets are simply the earliest of the three, which makes them a useful early-warning system.

In Richmond Hill and the older bungalow and side-split stock common through York Region, you will notice this earlier than newer subdivisions do — block foundations and window wells that collect exactly the damp leaf debris crickets breed in.

The three crickets you will actually find in an Ontario basement

Getting the identification right changes what you do about it.

Field crickets are the classic ones — glossy black or very dark brown, roughly 15–25 mm, long antennae, obvious wings. These are the loud ones; a single male in a finished basement can be heard through a closed bedroom door. They live outdoors and come in accidentally, which is good news: seal the way in and the problem ends.

House crickets are lighter — yellowish-brown with darker banding across the head. They are the species most likely to establish indoors and keep breeding through the winter, because unlike field crickets they do not need the outdoor cycle. Still hearing chirping in January? This is usually what you have.

Camel crickets (also called spider or cave crickets) are the ones that make people call in a panic. Humpbacked, tan and mottled, no wings, enormous back legs, and they jump toward you rather than away. The thing worth knowing: camel crickets do not chirp at all — they have no sound-producing wing structure. Large jumping crickets with no chirping means camel crickets, and they are telling you that space is damp. Finding them is a moisture finding as much as a pest finding.

Why the chirping only happens at night — and stops when you walk in

Only males chirp, by scraping a ridged vein on one forewing against a scraper on the other. It is a mating call. Two things about it are useful.

First, the rate is temperature-dependent — faster chirping means a warmer room. This is a well-documented relationship in entomology, and why the old “count the chirps to get the temperature” trick has any basis at all.

Second, they stop when they detect vibration. That is why you can stand in the basement for ten minutes hearing nothing, go upstairs, and have it start again inside a minute. People conclude the sound is “in the walls,” or that they imagined it. They did not.

The hunting method: go down at night, stand still with the lights off for three to four full minutes, and let it resume. Then move toward it in slow stages, pausing each time it stops. Check behind and under the dryer, the water heater, stored cardboard, and the sill plate.

Crickets are a symptom, not the disease

This is the part most homeowners miss, and it is the part that actually matters.

A cricket is roughly 20 mm long with a rigid body. It cannot chew through anything. To get into your basement it had to find a hole that already existed. That same hole is available to every other pest working the warmth gradient this fall: spiders, which peak in September; a house mouse, which needs only the width of a pencil; and the cluster flies, boxelder bugs and earwigs making the identical migration.

So when a client tells us they have “just a cricket problem,” what we usually find is three or four unsealed entry points that were going to produce a mouse call in six weeks. Treating the cricket and ignoring the opening is spending money on the symptom.

Our residential pest control program is built around entry points first and treatment second, in that order.

The exclusion pass that stops crickets (and everything behind them)

Do this before you buy a single spray. It takes an afternoon.

Door sweeps. Stand inside the garage in daylight with the door closed. Any light under or beside that door is an open door as far as an insect is concerned. Replace the bottom seal and the side astragals, and do the same for the basement walk-out and any exterior man-door. This single item accounts for more cricket entry than everything else combined.

Weep vents. Brick homes have deliberate gaps in the mortar at the base of the wall for drainage. They must stay open — do not caulk them. Fit stainless weep vent covers instead.

Utility penetrations. Where the AC line set, gas line, hose bib, dryer vent and electrical service enter the wall, there is almost always an oversized hole with a shrunken bead of old caulk around it. Pack these with copper mesh and seal over with an exterior-grade sealant.

The first metre of grade. Clear leaf litter, mulch and stacked firewood back from the foundation. That band of damp organic material against the wall is the cricket nursery.

Interior moisture. If you found camel crickets, run a dehumidifier in that space and target 50% relative humidity or below. They will not persist in a dry crawlspace.

Lighting. Exterior white lights pull night-flying insects to the wall and crickets follow. Warm or amber fixtures near your most-used doors cut that sharply.

Where DIY runs out

Hardware store aerosols kill the cricket in front of you. They do not touch the population in the mulch bed, and they leave no residual on the surfaces crickets cross. The other common failure is treating the interior while leaving the exterior untouched — crickets are not an indoor insect, and everything you see inside will keep coming until the outside is handled.

A professional treatment inverts the order. We treat the exterior band where the insects stage, target the harbourage — window wells, weep courses, the sill line, under decks — with reduced-risk product, and handle the interior only where activity is confirmed. Our technicians are employed, licensed and background-checked, and every application is made under the Ontario Pesticides Act with our registration with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.

Current pricing: General Insect Control starts at $395 exterior, or $475 for interior and exterior. Every service begins with a $95 professional inspection, credited in full when you book the treatment. One-time services carry a 60-day guarantee.

The honest math: why year-round protection is the recommended path

A one-time insect service in late August solves the crickets that are moving right now. It does nothing about the spiders arriving in three weeks, the cluster flies in October, the overwintering activity in the walls, or the carpenter ants that emerge in April. Every one of those is a separate call and a separate invoice.

That is why we point most homeowners at an annual plan instead, and treat the one-time service as the entry point rather than the destination:

• Insect Control — $845/year. Scheduled seasonal treatments covering pressure that changes month to month, so the fall migration is handled before you hear it.
• Essentials — $1,195/year. Insect coverage plus rodent protection — the realistic package when crickets this month means mice next month.
• VIP — from $1,395/year. Broader coverage for larger properties or a history of recurring pressure.

The comparison that matters is not “$475 versus $845.” It is “$475 now plus whatever the next four calls cost” versus one covered year. Once a home needs two services in a season — and a home leaking crickets in August very often does — the plan is already the cheaper line. Compare the coverage on our plans and pricing page.

We hold a 5.0 rating across 126 Google reviews, are BBB Accredited, and carry $5M in liability coverage. If you are in Oshawa or anywhere across the GTA, York, Durham, Simcoe and Muskoka, we can be on site quickly — though September is our busiest stretch, so earlier bookings get better windows. You can also browse our pest library to see what else is on the move in Ontario right now.

Frequently asked questions

Are crickets dangerous? No. They do not bite meaningfully, do not sting, and carry no disease of concern to Ontario households. What they damage is fabric — cotton, wool, silk and paper, especially anything stained with sweat or food. Stored basement clothing is the usual casualty.

Why do I hear it in the walls? You almost certainly are not. You are hearing a cricket in the open, and the sound is reflecting off hard basement surfaces so the direction is unreadable. Sit still in the dark and it resolves.

Will crickets go away after the first frost? Field crickets outdoors die off. Anything already inside — particularly house crickets — will not. They keep going all winter in a heated basement, and house crickets breed indoors.

Do ultrasonic repellers work on crickets? No. There is no credible evidence for ultrasonic devices in cricket control.

I see big jumping ones and hear nothing. What is that? Camel crickets. They cannot chirp. Their presence indicates a humidity problem, and drying that space out is half the treatment.

What does treatment cost, and how fast can you come out? General Insect Control starts at $395 exterior or $475 interior and exterior, following a $95 inspection that is credited when you proceed. Season-long coverage is the Insect Control plan at $845 per year. Call (705) 302-1887 — late August through September is peak season for this call, so same-week scheduling is realistic but tightens as the month goes on.