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Posted on 06/13/2003 11:33:36 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
PALOMINO VALLEY, Nev. - Swarms of Mormon crickets are marching across the West, destroying rangeland and crops, slickening highways with their carcasses and leaving disgusted residents in their wake.
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"It's yucky," said Amy Nisbet of Elko in northeast Nevada, where this year crickets made their first appearance in recent memory. "You drive down the street and they pop like bubble wrap."
Mild winters and three years of drought have provided ideal conditions for the insects, which hatch in the spring and feed through the summer. Experts say this year's infestation in Nevada, Utah and Idaho could be the worst in decades.
Five million acres are infested in Nevada with the 2 1/2-inch long creeping insects, said Jeff Knight, entomologist with the Nevada Department of Agriculture.
"I've seen them eat weeds in a field but leave the alfalfa," Knight said. "Other times, they'll just strip the crop bare."
Their voracious appetites take in anything — sagebrush, alfalfa, wheat, barley, clover, seeds, grasses, vegetables. At a density of just one cricket per square yard, they can consume 38 pounds of forage per acre as they pass through an area. They don't fly, but can hop and crawl a mile in a day and up to 50 miles in a season. And before they die in the fall, they lay the eggs that will become next year's swarm.
The Mormon cricket actually is a katydid, similar to a grasshopper. It got its name in 1848 when swarms invaded the fields of Mormon settlers in Utah. According to lore, the settlers prayed for divine assistance that arrived in the form of gulls, which ate the insects and saved the crops.
Though Knight couldn't provide an economic damage estimate, he said this year's infestation is twice as widespread as last year. The bugs are showing up in places they haven't been seen before, such as Elko's city limits and Palomino Valley north of Reno.
Last week, Elko County commissioners declared a state of emergency because of the worsening two-week infestation. Officials in southwestern Idaho say the infestation there is the worst since World War II.
"They've been building up there on the Boise front for several years, but last year was the first year everything seems to have coalesced and really erupted," said Mike Cooper of the Idaho Department of Agriculture.
"They're cyclic and they build up over a number of years, kind of peak, and then usually some kind of natural disease comes in and starts taking them down," Cooper said.
In Utah, agriculture officials estimate 6 million acres — more than double last year's plague — will be infested before the crickets die off.
Dick Wilson of the Utah Department of Agriculture said the dismal predictions were "all true. (My staff) are all out in the field, working seven days a week" fighting the bugs.
Earlier this spring, Nevada treated about 66,000 acres with an insecticide that kills the insects before they mature. But as the treatment cuts down their numbers in one area, they pop up somewhere else.
The chief weapon is carbaryl, an insecticide commonly known as Sevin. It is mixed with bran and spread before the crickets as they advance. Crickets lured to the bait quickly die. The poisoned carcasses are consumed by cannibalistic fellow crickets, which also die.
State officials said their priority is to protect public lands, crops — and motorists. In Idaho the state has posted warning signs on State Route 55. Crickets smashed by cars create a mush slicker than ice.
"We're doing our best to keep them off the highway," said Martin Larraneta, a state entomologist coordinating cricket controls in Elko. "It can be like a grease slick."
So far there are no reports of accidents caused by the crickets.
While serious, this year's outbreak isn't the most severe in Nevada history, experts said.
A 1939 state publication noted an infestation in Eureka County in 1882, when trains were unable to travel the main line of the Central Pacific Railroad "due to the rails being so thoroughly greased with crushed crickets," state archivist Guy Rocha said.
In the 1930s, a band of crickets 12 miles long and at times several feet deep was reported in Elko County, Rocha said.
The crickets have existed for millions of years and were once a food source for American Indians. But the swarms covering fields and roads and houses horrify modern residents.
"When it comes to something that's six-legged, people have a big problem with that," Knight said.
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On the Net:
http://extension.usu.edu/hoppers/htmfiles/mormoncrickets.htm
from Utah State University...
"...The Mormon cricket is not a true cricket. The insect resembles more a lifestyle of a grasshopper....Male and female Mormon crickets are large insects and can reach lengths of two and one-half inches during the adult stage. The female Mormon cricket is distinguished by the long ovipositor that also looks like a type of "stinger" located at the end of the abdomen. The male lacks this ovipositor. The Mormon cricket can be economically devastating..."
"...Young Mormon crickets are called nymphs. These nymphs develop during the spring months. They undergo seven stages of development called in-stars. It takes 60 to 90 days for the Mormon cricket to pass through these seven stages and obtain the adult stage...The Mormon cricket cannot fly, but is still an extremely mobile insect. When the crickets are young, they do not migrate long distances. After about the fourth in-star and during the adult stage the Mormon crickets become ravenous and start banding together. Once the crickets have banded together, they begin migrating. During their migrations they destroy everything in their path...
"...The most effective way to reduce Mormon cricket populations is to use carbaryl bait...The idea is to apply a barrier of bait around or in front of a band of migrating crickets. Once the first wave consumes the bait they will die within a few minutes. The crickets coming from behind will eat the dead crickets causing a chain reaction of crickets being killed by the bait. Mormon crickets do not fly so they will almost always hit the barrier of poisoned bait...It is best to apply the bait when the crickets are still young or in the developing stages..."
I've driven thru them. I guess I could scrape them off my grill and tires, not to forget the highway... take them home and add some garlic, onion and bell peppers and have my own faheeta (however you spell it) feast.
Ahh the containment policy...
Sure enough. Back on the prairie in the late 1800s, my folks would acquire a huge flock of chickens and let them roam freely during cricket and grasshopper years. The chickens were very well fed and the crickets/grasshoppers were nicely kept under control.
By the end of the season we not only were selling eggs by the carload, we had enough free-range chicken to sell that we could have supplied "The Colonel."
Like grasshoppers I assume. Just remember to break off the head before chowing down.
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