If you've never encountered a cave cricket (a.k.a. "camel cricket"), you might not know how to react when you first see one up close. You'd probably be a bit grossed out. The big ones have peanut-sized (or even cashew-sized) bodies, with lanky legs more than 2 inches long.

But if you see one in the garage of a house that you're about to buy, and then notice there's a cluster of 50-100 of them the day *after* you buy the house, and see them hopping haphazardly off the floor, walls, and ceiling (they especially like the ceiling), your required reaction is pretty obvious - What the ___ are these things, and how do I get rid of them?

Then you'd look them up on Wikipedia and find a few more references via Google, and you'd mostly learn that they love damp, dark places (e.g., our garage), and that the most effective natural predator is the equally unpleasant-looking house centipede.

If you're into poisons, you could try spraying insecticides, but a few sources say that common pesticides are only *partly* effective on these guys. If, like me, you're *not* into poisons, you'd probably be reluctant to spray stuff on the ceiling, where (A) pesticide would waft through some cracks & crevices to the main house upstairs, and (B) the poison will drip back down onto you whenever there's some condensation on the ceiling.

So how to get rid of the creepy-crawly menace? Enter the Shop Vac, my new best friend.

Vacuuming bugs is a time-honored practice, but what do you do once you've caught them in the vacuum? If they're still alive, you don't want to handle them, and if they're dead, their guts might gum up the works of the vacuum. That's where the "wet" part of "wet/dry vac" comes in handy.

1. Set up the shop vac in "wet" mode (i.e., no paper filter inside).
2. Fill the vac bucket part-way (I did about 4 inches deep) with water.
3. Put a long extension and a pointy tip on the end of the vac hose.
4. Vacuum every living (or dead) creepy-crawly thing you see.
5. Just to be sure, vacuum up some water after the bugs to make sure they've all been doused (have this pool of water ready beforehand).
6. Turn off the vacuum, open it, and dump the contents outside.
7. Rinse the vac innards with a hose as necessary.

Naturally, you should only vacuum up things that are safe to dump outside (e.g., bugs & spider webs, but not household trash, construction debris, etc). If all goes according to plan, everything you vacuumed should now be dead (either from the impact or from drowning), so you shouldn't have to worry about angry bugs taking their vengenance on you. If you're worried anyway, you can dump the contents farther from the house to prevent recidivism, but I really doubt there will be any - mine were all thoroughly dead.

I did this on Saturday, and then another round on Sunday to pick up some stragglers who hid out during the Saturday attack. I think there are still some few survivors, but compared to the infestation we had before, it's a tremendous improvement. Almost ready to let the other bug move in...