Dale Earnhardt Jr. Once Let 2,000 Crickets Loose In His Friends Room: “It Looked Like The Floor Was Moving”

Next level pranking.

With the release of the Prime Video Earnhardt documentary, race fans have gotten an incredibly interesting, and nuanced, look at Dale Earnhardt the race car driver, the man, the friend and the father, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.  and his sister Kelley played a huge part in the production of the series, in addition to being heavily featured in it, telling stories about their dad and memories that were both good and bad.

But in addition to the more serious side of things, they told tons of great stories, and Dale Jr. has had some of the people from the doc on his podcast the Dale Jr. Download, including his long-time best friend Josh Snider, who made an appearance in Earnhardt. Josh is one of the original “Dirty Mo Posse” members and has a brand on his arm to prove it.

The guys originally met at a mutual friend’s party in the late 90’s in Mooresville, North Carolina and soon after became inseparable. The two shared a double-wide trailer where they raised all kinds of hell. From there, “Camp Chaos” was born, and the two would live out their 20s having house parties and enjoying Dale’s budding success as he progressed in his NASCAR career.

And during they episode, they recalled many different pranks that Josh, Dale Jr. and their other close friends would play on each other… with the ultimate one being how Dale let 2,000 crickets loose in Josh’s room, where he lived with Jr. in the trailer that Jr. owned:

“Talk about probably one of the biggest pranks that we ever pulled on each other. We put a lot of pranks over the years, the most notable prank that I believe are the 2,000 crickets that I turned loose in your bedroom.

I don’t know why I needed to do this, I don’t know what you had done that made me think that this was what I needed to do. Do you remember what provoked me putting the crickets? Was it the pregnancy test? What happened first?”

The guys discussed how there was a string of pranks that went on for a while, which started when they broke into their friends Topher’s house, who lived just up the road from them, and threw a gallon of water on him and a pound of flour in the middle of the night. They said it ruined his bed, got everything mucky, and Jr.’s mom chewed them out for doing it.

From then on, it was game on, but Josh never thought Jr. would do anything too crazy to him since he lived in Jr.’s house:

“You owned the double wide, I mean, you owned that trailer that I lived in. Well, it was more like a triple wide, it was a modular home. Kinda like a double and single wide merged into one. But I’m like, surely he won’t do nothing too bad to his house.”

Jr. was hoping Josh wouldn’t notice them until nighttime, when he turned his lights off and they started making noise.

But that’s obviously not what happened… at the time, Dale and Josh were hosting an XM radio show, which they laugh about considering they had on guests like Burt Reynolds and Jay-Z and they had no idea what they were doing… hilarious. They also had on plenty of local sports people like Steve Smith, who was in his prime as a wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, as well as NASCAR owner Rick Hendrick and others.

But Josh said one day when they were doing the show, which was not far from the house in a room above Jr.’s late model shop, his friends couldn’t stop laughing and he knew something was up.

He ran up to the house, and when he opened the door to his room, he said it looked like “the floor was moving with the crickets.” His room was COVERED and I think I would just burn it down at that point, honestly:

“So I remember whispering some going on about it. Because Topher and Hovis come running up, and we did it in this room above your late model shop. The dirty dome. So I knew something was going on. I hear whispering, you were just like laughing. I’m like, ‘What did y’all do?’ Meanwhile, poor Kenny Wallace is sitting there, you know.

He took his headphones off and I run straight up to my house. It was probably, what, 400 or 500 yards away, and everybody’s behind me. And I walk in, and there’s so many of them it looked like the floor was moving with the crickets.

I’m like, ‘What the f***? What did y’all do? Holy s***. Like, the place is already a s***hole. We tore that triple wide up, man. It had golf ball holes in it.”

They used to drive golf balls through the wall on purpose just to see if they could get them through the wall, and Josh laughed about how Jr.’s sister Kelley would stay mad at them for doing stuff like that. It started after the infamous moment that Jr. said “s***” in a post-race interview at Talladega:

‘When you said s*** at Talladega, you come home that night and you were happy because you won, but you were like, I might be in some trouble on this one, you know what I mean? We would always be buzzed up ready for you to come home because it was Sunday night, your adrenaline was still going.

We had great Sunday night parties. And for some reason, there was a dartboard there, and it was probably me, I don’t know. I hit the bullseye, and it just turned to s*** from there. Full on driving, let’s see if we can hit it through the other side.”

When Jr. asked how long the crickets stayed, Josh said they had to get professional help out there because crickets multiply so quickly, and his girlfriend at the time wouldn’t come over and I can’t say I blame her one bit. I can’t even picture 2,000 crickets in one bedroom… I’m sure it was as gross as it sounds:

“That was tough. It was terrible. I was dating a girl at the time, she wouldn’t come over and stay. She was like, ‘That place is already a s***hole, I ain’t coming.’ So I think I talked to Sunny, and we had to get some professional help over to get rid of them.

I mean, it went on for a couple weeks, because they lay eggs. They multiply pretty fast, things like this can be a serious problem. I’m like, I don’t know why he would do this to his own house.”

If those trailer walls could talk… Lord have mercy.

The whole episode is absolutely hilarious, and even if you’re not really into racing, you’ll quickly see why these two had their own show because they’re hilarious together and I couldn’t stop laughing listening to them talk.

You can watch them tell the cricket story below, and I highly recommend it fi you need a good laugh today:

The post Dale Earnhardt Jr. Once Let 2,000 Crickets Loose In His Friends Room: “It Looked Like The Floor Was Moving” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.