The place is overrun with the greasy little bugs. With each step you take on his property, the squirmy inch-long grasshoppers jump for cover in every direction. Those that don't crunch under foot perch themselves atop tall grass stalks, crawl up pant legs or munch through gardens.
Across the road isn't much better. Grasshoppers blanketed the neighbors' entryway a few days ago and forced them to come in through the back door.
"I'd call this the closest that I've seen to a plague in a long time," Halligan said.
Grasshoppers are regular summer visitors and a perennial crop-eating pest for farmers, but this year's invasion in Tooele County west of Salt Lake City is worse than anyone can remember. Tooele County commissioners have been swamped with calls about grasshoppers, particularly by people living next to undeveloped land where grasshoppers hatch - sometimes up to 2,000 per square foot.
"There's like 100 times more grasshoppers than what we're used to," said Bruce Clegg, a county commissioner whose family has lived in the area for generations.
Many of the culprits this year are clear-winged grasshoppers, which began hatching several weeks ago and have moved like an unyielding wave across the parts of the landscape ever since.
Northeast of Tooele, the grasshoppers showed up suddenly and attacked Leana Jackson's backyard garden, infiltrated her lawn and even found their way into her house and car.
"They're just a nuisance," Jackson said.
Alone, the brown and tan grasshoppers are small and more likely to tickle than terrify. But in large numbers - and they almost always come in large numbers - they are a hungry force to be reckoned with as they search for grasses and other plants to eat.
"Just their sheer abundance can make them a pretty destructive insect," said Clint Burfitt, an entomologist with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.
His office estimates that grasshoppers have hit about 250,000 acres in Utah this year. That's slightly more than the estimate at the end of 2008.
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- ClipsFC
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I would like to remind folks that John McCain used the study of the breeding habits of Mormon Crickets as his best example for frivolous spending.
Not to say that he didn't deserve to be president because of that oversight but just like to point out that he was a short sighted asshole. ;)
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- theultimateend
- 5 months ago
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Taken out of context, most anything can be made to look silly. Sadly, our population falls for this time and time again.
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cybexg, what was taken out of contex? the plauge like quality of the Utah grasshoppers or McCain on the campaign trail stating that a study of these creatures was a frivolus speanding?
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wouldnt the mormon buzzards take care of them
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- dreamsenvoy
- 5 months ago
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The Christans are going to think the end is coming.
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put them in some stir fried rice good stuff or maybe deep fry them and munch on them like french fries they are good and good for you
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Oddly enough, they've started showing up in Arizona too. In my house....
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Sounds like love bug season in Florida. We don't claim plague when we get the swarm twice a year even thought they wreck the paint on our cars. These grasshoppers live short lives yes? Annoying but it passes quick enough. Someone needs to start capturing them...they make great fishing bait!
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When I lived in Northeastern NV they would get so bad on the roads that they would actually become as slippery as the snow and ice, and it sure did suck trying to wash them of my trucks fenders, mud flaps, and windshield.
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- Ihatethemall
- 5 months ago
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I lived in Neb. when they had a terrible invasion of the things. FREAKY! And what they left behind, or more correctly didn't leave behind, a stripped envionment. No grass leaves, nothing left above ground, even ate the algae on the shed out back, It looked like it had just been sawed. Crunch crunch when you walk,all in your face and hair and get in your clothes if it's loose.YUK!SHIVER!
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- phoenixtoo
- 5 months ago
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