A crawlspace?

We had to call five different places, but we finally got a bug-exterminator to come out here even though it's Sunday.

I'm glad we did.

Though we'd swept all the crickets outside last night, they were back again this morning in full force. What's more, we finally saw some of them coming up from beneath our floor.

The hardwood planks in the living room have separated in the past how-ever-many decades of expanding and contracting with the seasons, and now there are some pretty sizable cracks between a few of them. Hence, apparently, our cricket problem.

 The Bug Exterminator Fellow - who was very nice about everything - took one look at our floor (and the crickets) and asked how to get into the crawlspace.

"The what?" we asked.
"The crawlspace." He pointed at the dark space between the cracks in the wood. "Down there. You guys have a basement or outdoor access or something?"
We shook our heads.

We'd always wondered why the condo unit to our left has a basement, and the unit to the right of us has a basement - but we've got nothing.  An extra floor (hell, an extra room) would really open this place up. Alas. No basement. No access to a crawlspace.


"Well, you've got two options. I can spray down there as best I can through these cracks, and we can see what happens, or..." He trailed off and shrugged apologetically.

"Or what?"

"We might have to pull up a couple of these boards so I can drop some bait down for them to eat."

As neither of us were quite ready to spend the afternoon replacing our floorboards, we opted for the simple solution. Hopefully that'll do the trick.

After last summer's moldy bedroom debacle, I really don't feel like ripping up more floors anytime soon.