mole cricket

mole cricket (plural mole crickets)

1. Any of various large insects from the family Gryllotalpidae that burrow into moist soil and feed on plant roots.

   Synonym: (UK dialect) fen cricket

   • 1964, Jan Morris, “Wild Spain”, in Spain, Faber and Faber, published 2008, →ISBN:

     Spain is full of mole-crickets, shrill little underground insects whose goggle eyes you may sometimes see peering sleeplessly out of their burrows, and whose buzz is so energetic that their whole bodies vibrate down there like the radiators of very old motor-cars.