I have crickets in my house. Well, maybe I should say "had" crickets in my house because I seem to be getting rid of them.
At first, I tried getting them out in a humane manner but I couldn't figure out how to do that. I tried scooping them up on a piece of paper so I could put them out a door or window but they just hop right off the paper. I could have started squishing them but that seemed cruel. They weren't harming anything…just distracting me by hopping through my kitchen or hunkering down in some bathroom to make their not-unpleasant noise. At times in there, I've felt like a bear doing you-know-what in the woods.
I also get a lot of spiders in here and some of them look like if they bit me, I would probably not gain the proportionate strength of a spider and then figure out how to make a web shooter device that shoots webs out of my wrists that are strong enough to swing from building to building on and which then dissolve without a trace. (I always wondered why Peter Parker had so many problems when he'd invented something he probably could have sold for millions of dollars.)
Anyway, I decided I needed to find a way to remove crickets, spiders and perhaps other occasional creatures from my premises without gooshing them so I bought one of these…
There are several similar devices from different makers out there to choose from and I have no experience with any of them. I just tried this one because it looked simple and because their ads say, "You will be pleased with the sucking results!" How do you not respond to a slogan like that?
It's called the Bug Vacuum by One Kubed Designs and it sells for $24.00. It runs on one 9 volt battery and it has two buttons on it. One puts out a little blacklight LED glow to enable you to find the bugs. The other turns on a little vacuum that sucks the bugs into a tube. I've found the light to be fairly useless but the rest of it works as advertised, at least on crickets and spiders. I'm skeptical it has enough power to budge a large cockroach but fortunately, I haven't had to test that out yet.
When I see a cricket or spider, I grab my Bug Vacuum and suck them up into the tube. You can cork the end of the tube (a plug is included) or put your hand over the end but I've found that if I just point it upwards, the bug stays in the tube long enough for me to take it outside and release it unharmed.
That's all it does but that's all I wanted it to do. Well, actually, I'd like a larger model which will work on people who come to my door and try to convince me that my life is meaningless and that I'm going to hell unless I instantly convert to their religion and donate money. Them, I may have to start stepping on…and believe me, I've got the feet to do it.