The photos of that McDonalds are just amazing. I’ve fished with crickets most of my life and they don’t bother me. But theres an ick factor to these photos. Crawling up the walls? Covering the sidewalks? It must make a nice crunch when people walk.
One article I read says they smell rather like rotting flesh, plus crickets happen to not be above cannibalism if they find some dead crickets. So either way, killing crickets just contributes to your problem - more stench faster plus you’ve provided food for the crickets who are looking to breed and lay many eggs for next year.
It’s been dry here too. There’s a small patch of yard that had been re-seeded. The ground started to crack in that patch. When we watered to try to save the new grass, the crickets started coming out. The dog likes to eat them, so we stopped watering. Let 'em stay down there, do whatever they’re doing. I hate crickets.
I encountered a grasshopper infestation during a summer like this at a South Dakota rest stop once. I think it was quite a bit worse than that cricket invasion. It was impossible to take a step without crushing piles of grasshoppers. They had gotten into the power system somewhere and there were no lights in the restrooms, so my mother and I had to use flashlights and walk (crunch, crunch, crunch) through the critters into the stalls, sweep them off the toilets with tissue, and then perch precariously among the scrabbling, skittering horde whilst we did our business.
It will tell you much about traveling with my mother to hear that was one of my favorite memories from that trip.
Here on the NW side of OKC (Village), I have hardly seen any. Downtown and south to Norman and beyond, there are hordes of them. Are the Sooners hoarding them?
I have seen a LOT of 'em around Chickasha area (and heard about same in other nearby towns, too) last couple of days, fwiw, and the Toll Plaza on Bailey Turnpike (~10 minutes north of Chickasha) seemed almost paved with crushed ones the day before yesterday.
I was up by Lake Hefner two days ago and was really surprised at lack of any sign of what was so evident just to the south. Weird, for sure.