Mulberry Jam

A Mormon Cricket crosses the road. Photo from Reno Gazette-Journal and The Wall Street Journal.

Some of you may know that I have a deep dislike of crickets. I wouldn’t call it a phobia, that implies my dislike is unreasonable. No, I hate them for very good and rational reasons. Mostly my problem is that they jump. And they’re as likely to jump right at you as away.

It’s a good thing I don’t live in Nevada. I saw a story in The Wall Street Journal this week describing an actual plague of a species called the Mormon Cricket, famous for swarming in very large numbers in the springtime. The poor residents of small towns in the Nevada desert have quite a problem to contend with:

In flyspeck villages like Tuscarora, crickets are a serious matter. The critters hatch in April in the barren soil of northern Nevada, western Utah and other parts of the Great Basin, quickly growing into blood-red, ravenous insects more than 2 inches long.

Then they march. In columns that in peak years can be two miles long and a mile across, swarms move across the badlands in search of food. Starting in about May, they march through August or so, before stopping to lay eggs for next year and die.

In between, they make an awful mess. They destroy crops and lots of the other leafy vegetation. They crawl all over houses, and some get inside. “You’ll wake up and there’ll be one sitting on your forehead, looking at you,” says Ms. Moore.

They swarm on roads, where cars turn them into slicks that can cause accidents. So many dead ones piled up on a highway last year that Elko County, Nev., called in snowplows to scrape them off.

I’m quite sure I’d be moving out for the duration. At least our local insect plague of locusts only happens once every seventeen years! The Journal reports that insecticide is only intermittently effective against such numbers. The only thing that seems to really help is sound, specifically blasting heavy metal music at the critters to get them to move on. Seems they really don’t care for Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.

Hmm, does that mean I have something in common with a cricket? Perish the thought.