Crickets wreak havoc

Published on 30/06/2003 01:00

IT IS the height of summer in the western United States but the snow ploughs and gritting lorries are out in force.

With temperatures sometimes topping 100F, it is not snow and ice they are clearing up, it is crickets.

Millions of the insects are sweeping through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming in the country’s worst infestation for more than 60 years, destroying crops and turning fields, roads and pavements into moving carpets of insects.

Plough crews attempt to keep the highways clear and sand is put down when crushed bugs make the roads as slippery as oil slicks, but authorities fear they are fighting a losing battle against an insect menace that has caused millions of dollars in damage.

"It’s the worst I have ever seen," Bruce Johnson, a pest control manager in Colorado, told the Los Angeles Times. "We have had three or four years of easy winters and droughts. There has been a massive build-up of eggs and now they have all hatched."

The 2in-long Mormon crickets, named after a plague that affected Utah’s religious pioneers 155 years ago, were last seen in such numbers in the 1930s. They travel in swarms up to a mile wide and three miles long, devouring everything in their path and covering a mile or more a day.

They do not stop at buildings, either. Walls shimmer as the purple insects climb to escape the searing ground-level heat then eat through screens to enter houses.

"There’s not much you can do about it except sit and watch them go by," said George Bosick, a ranch manager in Elk Springs, Colorado. "They’re like a herd of animals, all heading in the same direction. They eat the gardens and everything, and if the door’s open or they find a crack, they’ll be in the house too.

"It’s not pleasant but you get used to it. If you’re driving and run them over, they pop like bubble-wrap. The squashed ones get cannibalised by the others, then they get run over too, so pretty soon you get lots of crushed bugs. The more you kill them, the more they come."

Utah has been hardest hit, losing an estimated $25 million (15 million) in crops. A statewide agricultural disaster was declared last month because of the insects, drought and high winds. In neighbouring Nevada, the insects have infested 7,800 square miles.