Is JD Vance to Blame for Cricket Swarms? Rando on Reddit Says Yes, So It Must Be True

Hundreds swarmed the wall at the University of North Texas and clung to it like MAGA supporters on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. Their blackened exoskeletons — the field crickets, we mean — offered protection from grasshopper attack but none from the footsteps of a college student or adjunct professor in need of caffeine and nicotine before class.

Hundreds more appeared on the ground, walls and ceiling at a Kroger shopping center in Denton, especially at Pack 'N' Mail. “Watch out for the crickets,” the store clerk cautioned.

The annual horde of field crickets has arrived in North Texas. If they seem a little more numerous this year, that’s because they tend to thrive after dry springs and summers followed by rain and cooler temperatures in the fall. They swarm banks, gas stations, stores — Ross has been a hot spot in the past — and restaurants like Denny’s, Starbucks and Whataburger, where their nightly songs are accompanied by the sounds of their bodies crunching under car tires.

They leave behind a rotted roadkill smell that brings a flock of crows to feed like a scene from Kaw, a 2006 made-for-TV horror film not to be confused with The Birds unless you want Alfred Hitchcock’s ghost to rise and give you a good smack.

The crickets also surprise the hell out of Texas newcomers such as out-of-state students attending the University of North Texas and other foreigners.

“I’m from up north in Chicago. I didn’t think anything like this was possible,” says Hector Grimaldo, an associate at Pac ‘N’ Mail in Denton, who first noticed them last week. “It’s a weird experience. They’re covering every surface, over the door and the cracks in the walls. … In my eyes, they’re not dangerous; they’re annoying.”

It’s the kind of annoying situation that has caused those not familiar with the swarm in North Texas to post photographs of it on social media sites such as Reddit, where an image of the cricket-covered wall at UNT appeared last week under the heading “What the fuck?”

“Oh! Yeah, the City of Denton invited pestilence as part of the new Denton Halloween attractions,” sherryisme wrote in a comment to the photo.

Others referred to it as the “cricketpocalypse” caused by a “false fall.”

One commenter, Ye-Man_Mane, blamed the man whom many, many people have called Trump’s Yes-man on the November ballot:

“JD Vance was in Dallas last night. They follow him wherever he goes.”

That’s not really true, but as Vance himself has suggested, a story doesn’t have to be true if you’re trying to make a point, so let’s go with Ye-Man_Mane: Yes, Vance is to blame for the crickets, which also eat dogs and cats, but only those of native-born white Americans. Pass it on.

Others such as FatDudeOnAMTB reminisced about past cricketpocalypses. “I can remember several years ago when the crickets were so bad the groundskeepers at TWU were using leaf blowers to make piles of the dead ones. Many, many piles …”

Devyn Case, UNT’s director of media relations, shared a response from UNT’s facilities department that stressed it was normal to see “an uptick in activity from crickets and grasshoppers” early in the fall semester.

UNT does routine pest control, while specific areas of UNT, such as dining and housing, use “best practices to limit infestations in order to provide a clean environment on campus,” according to the facilities department.

In a Sept. 25 news release, Texas A&M AgriLife expert Wizzie Brown stressed there was nothing to fear if you come upon a swarm of crickets. “[They] don’t sting or bite, so they’re not doing anything other than being annoying, especially if a male gets in your house and is chirping to attract females.”

But she works for the government, is a scientist and is obviously using an alias, so, you know, believe what you will, sheeple. (THEY’RE EATING THE CATS AND DOGS! BECAUSE JD VANCE!)

Janet Hurley, an extension program specialist from Texas A&M in Dallas, didn’t have too much else to add “except they love football stadiums as well.”

“If you hate the heat, then these creepy critters are a sign that the weather is changing, just in time for the state fair, where there is a lot of lighting as well.”

Cricket mating season spikes in August and September, when the rain and cooler weather make an appearance. The female crickets search for their mates at night. The males chirp by rubbing their appendages and scraping their wings together to produce their mating song. The din has been known to keep predators away and to drive people to the edge if one of the suckers find a corner of a bedroom in which to hide.

A Nov. 6, 2005, article in Discover magazine reports that the male cricket sadly have to do what many Texans will have to do if Republicans manage to ban contraceptives: drop their “sperm package” on the female cricket which, in turn, could very well chirp “What the fuck?” and wipe off. But only if it’s a Democrat cricket. And bitter.

After their one-night stand, the egg laying begins, between 50 and 100 every couple of days.

Several pest control sites such as the Bug Master point out that female crickets like to lay eggs in plant stems outside and damp humid areas indoors such as the inside of walls, which may explain the wall and ceiling swarms.

Adult male and female crickets become sexually mature at three to four days old and live only two to four months, provided they avoid the Whataburger parking lot.