My Town Monday: Cricket Farm, Lakeside, CA

I suspect this location will not be high on your list if you vacation in San Diego. Why? It's creepy and smelly.

I'm not sure what I expected when Child #4 and I visited a cricket farm last week.

Jiminy Crickets hopping all over grass of green, perhaps? Miniature wooden houses with lots of tubes (because crickets love to climb up tubes)? Music from Pinocchio?

Certainly, I did not expect this . . .


The cricket farm takes up two long, corrugated-metal buildings. Each building houses 13 MILLION crickets! At the moment, only one of these buildings is in use because the farm is dealing with a cricket virus. The virus paralyzes the crickets at four weeks. How do you get rid of a cricket virus? With lots of bleach and an ozone air filter. Hmmm....there might have been something else as well, but I forget now.


This is the door to the office. Child #4 and I ventured in (because together we are BRAVE) to pick up our order. It was hot and smelly. Apparently, there are THREE HUNDRED TO FOUR HUNDRED walk-ins here a week! Quite the little cottage industry!


And here's our merchandise:
-250 six-week/large crickets (because it's $9 to buy 250 large crickets here and $5-$7 to buy 60 large crickets at the petstore!)
-1,000 pinhead crickets
-a tube of dry cricket food

As we drove off, Child #4 and I commeted that this wasn't our favorite My Town Monday fieldtrip. However, it was probably the chameleons' favorite!

Please check out the links to the other My Town Monday posts on the official My Town Monday blog. I bet my post is the last one up today. I wonder if there's a prize . . .