Camel Crickets on Long Island: Why They're in Your Basement (and Why They Stay)

If you're finding pale, humpbacked bugs with long legs in your Long Island basement, and they jump at you when you get close, they're camel crickets. Homeowners also call them spider crickets or cave crickets. They don't bite, they can't chirp, and they don't carry disease. What makes them different from the crickets in your yard is that they live in damp basements and crawl spaces year-round and breed there, so seeing them isn't a sign of the season. It's a sign the space is damp enough for them to stay. Getting the basement below 50% relative humidity is the best thing a homeowner can do on their own. An established population needs professional treatment, because the ones you see are a fraction of the ones hiding.

Camel cricket or field cricket? Which one is in your basement

Most cricket advice treats "crickets" as one pest. In a Long Island basement they are really two, and they call for very different levels of concern.

The fastest way to sort them is sound. If you're hearing chirping, that's a field cricket. Field crickets are black or dark brown and fully winged, and the males are the ones making noise. They live outdoors and wander in as temperatures drop in the fall. Most of the ones that get inside die off within a few weeks instead of building a population. They can hang on where a basement or crawl space is damp enough to suit them, but they don't sustain themselves indoors the way camel crickets do.

If you're finding them silently, that's a camel cricket. Camel crickets are humpbacked, wingless, and brown-gray to tan, with very long antennae and hind legs. They can't chirp at all, because they have no wings to do it with. Their size and the way they jump lead a lot of people to mistake them for spiders. These are the ones that matter, because a damp Long Island basement isn't a place they visit. It's a place they live, breed, and stay all year.

That distinction drives everything below. For a side-by-side breakdown of both species and how each is treated, see our cricket control page.

Do camel crickets bite? Are they dangerous?

No. Camel crickets don't bite people, aren't venomous, and aren't known to spread disease. The jump that makes it feel like they're coming after you is a startle response. They leap away from vibration and movement, and they can jump up to about 3 feet, so "away" sometimes ends up being straight at you.

The real cost is to your stored belongings. Camel crickets chew on cardboard, paper, and natural fabrics, and in an unfinished basement that adds up over a season. More on what they eat below.

Seeing them in late summer and fall

Late summer and fall are when most Long Island homeowners first notice crickets. As nights cool, outdoor crickets move toward warmth and moisture, and a basement offers both. It holds the summer's humidity and stays mild well after the yard has cooled off.

If what you're seeing is chirping field crickets near basement doors and window wells, that's the seasonal wave, and it passes. If what you're seeing is silent camel crickets, fall isn't when they arrived. It's just when you started noticing them, because a population that built up over the humid summer has gotten big enough to see.

The useful question in fall isn't how many you saw. It's which kind.

Seeing camel crickets in winter means they live there

This is the sighting that actually tells you something.

By January, outdoor cricket activity on Long Island has stopped, and the field crickets that came in during the fall are gone. So a cricket in your basement in the middle of winter didn't wander in from the yard. There's nothing out there to wander in from. It's part of a population living in the house.

Camel crickets don't need outdoor warmth or a seasonal cue. A heated Long Island home gives them a steady temperature, and an unfinished basement or crawl space gives them the humidity and darkness they need to keep feeding and reproducing straight through the winter. There's no dormant period to wait out and no spring die-off coming.

This is the most common misread we see. Homeowners assume the cold will take care of it, wait for a spring that doesn't reset anything, and by the next summer are dealing with a much larger population in the same space. Winter sightings mean the problem is indoors and keeping itself going. That's a different situation from a fall trickle, and it's the point where waiting starts to cost you.

Reading the count: what "how many" tells you

No single sighting settles it. The pattern does. Here's what each finding usually means:

• One cricket, once: likely a stray, especially in September or October. Note where you found it and watch that spot for two weeks.
• One or two a week through the fall: ordinary seasonal pressure if they're chirping field crickets. If they're silent camel crickets, it's worth an inspection while it's still small.
• Three or more in an evening: an established population rather than migrants. The ones out in open floor space are a minority of the ones in hiding.
• Any camel crickets from December through February: a resident indoor population. The season is no longer a possible explanation.
• Droppings on stored boxes or along the wall-floor joint: small, dark, and pepper-like. A sign of steady activity in one area rather than a passing insect.
• Shed skins in corners: crickets are maturing on site, not just getting in. A full life cycle is running in your basement.
• Chew damage on stored fabric, cardboard, or paper: a population that's been there long enough to do real damage, which usually means months, not weeks.

Two or more of these together is the practical point to call someone. One on its own is worth an inspection while it's still easy to solve.

What do camel crickets eat? (And what chew damage tells you)

Camel crickets are scavengers. They feed on paper, cardboard, natural fabrics, and other organic material, and in an unfinished basement that means stored clothing, book boxes, holiday decorations, and cardboard bins. Unlike a sighting, damage builds up, so it's a record of how long they've been there.

That makes it one of the most useful things to check, and almost nobody checks it until the damage is done. Light, irregular grazing on a few boxes suggests a modest population working one area. Damage across several bins in different parts of the basement, or holes through fabric, means the population is both larger and older than a count of live crickets would suggest.

Camel crickets don't damage the house itself: no wood, wiring, or framing. This is a stored-belongings problem. But in a basement nobody goes into, it can quietly ruin a season's worth of boxes.

Why moisture decides whether they stay

Temperature is why crickets come toward the house. Moisture is why they stay in it.

Camel crickets need humidity to survive, and that's the practical lever a homeowner has. A basement kept under 50% relative humidity is a much worse place for them to live than one that sits damp all summer, and it's the one change that works on the whole population rather than the individuals you can see.

That usually means a properly sized dehumidifier draining continuously instead of into a bucket someone has to remember to empty. It also means paying attention to the ordinary moisture sources: condensation on cold water pipes, a sump that discharges back toward the foundation, gutters and downspouts that dump against the wall instead of away from it, and soil that slopes toward the house. Clutter matters too. Cardboard stacked on a basement floor is food, shelter, and a moisture trap all at once.

None of that removes an established population. What it does is remove the conditions that let one rebuild, which is why drying the space and treating it work together rather than as alternatives. A dry basement that's already infested still needs treatment, and a treated basement that stays damp gets reinfested.

What a sticky trap actually tells you

Sticky traps are sold as a solution, but they're much more useful as a measuring tool.

As control, they're weak. They catch individual crickets and don't touch the hiding spots, so a full trap barely changes the population. As a diagnostic, though, they're genuinely useful and cheap. Put a few along the wall-floor joint in different parts of the basement and leave them for a week. Crickets travel along wall edges, so the trap that fills fastest is the one closest to where they're living.

That's worth doing before anyone comes out, because pointing a technician at the busiest corner is the most useful thing a homeowner can contribute to the inspection. What traps won't tell you is how many there are. Camel crickets gather in dark, undisturbed places like behind insulation, under stored items, and in crawl space voids, so a trap catch shows you a direction, not a headcount.

When camel crickets are most active on Long Island

Cricket pressure isn't even across the year in Nassau County and Western Suffolk, but indoors it never really drops to zero. Roughly how the year runs:

• January through March: no outdoor activity. Anything you find is an indoor population, which makes this the clearest time of year to tell what you're dealing with. It's also the easiest time to treat, because nothing is coming in from outside to replace what's knocked down.
• April and May: outdoor eggs hatch. Indoor populations that made it through the winter start growing as basements warm up and humidity climbs.
• June through August: the buildup months. Outdoor numbers grow and basement humidity rises together, which is why a population that was invisible in spring becomes obvious in late summer. This is when a dehumidifier earns its keep.
• Late August through October: peak entry. Field crickets move toward houses as the nights cool, and this is when most homeowners first call.
• November and December: outdoor activity ends and the field crickets that came in die off. Camel crickets settle in and keep going, which is what makes the January picture so telling.

The winter lull is the misleading part. When outdoor activity stops it looks like the problem is going away, and for field crickets it is. For camel crickets, nothing has changed except that you've stopped seeing the ones near the doors.

How to get rid of camel crickets

Start with what you can do yourself: dry the basement out, get stored cardboard off the floor and into sealed plastic bins, and use a few sticky traps to find where they're concentrated. Skip the store-bought sprays. Most are repellent-based, so crickets detect them, avoid the treated area, and move deeper into the house. The visible problem looks better while the actual population moves somewhere harder to reach.

The honest threshold for calling a professional: you're finding camel crickets outside of fall, seeing three or more in an evening, or finding droppings, shed skins, or chew damage on stored items. At that point the population is past what traps and a dehumidifier will solve.

Professional treatment works differently, and the difference is why it lasts. It uses non-repellent insecticides and baits that crickets can't detect. They move through the treated areas and carry the material back into hiding spots in crawl spaces and wall voids that no surface spray reaches.

At Battle A Bug, we've been treating cricket problems across Nassau County and Western Suffolk since 1996. Owner Victor Bonavita is a past president of both the New York Pest Management Association and the Long Island Pest Control Association. Every job starts with an inspection to confirm the species and find where they're living before anything is applied, because where camel crickets are concentrated shapes the whole treatment. We'll also walk you through the moisture conditions keeping them there, so the treatment isn't fighting the building. Because camel crickets live indoors year-round, ongoing quarterly service is what keeps a population from rebuilding.

For what treatment involves, what quarterly service covers, and what to expect from a visit, see our cricket control page. Call Nassau: 516-798-2847 | Suffolk: 631-425-2847.