GRASSHOPPER INVASIONS

Rex Burress

Grasshoppers are often as noticeable as butterflies in the good old summertime when insects have their chance to dance in the heat!

A particular hopper species, the Clear-winged Grasshopper [Melanoplus devastator], is reported plaguing ranchers in eastern Butte County and around Indian Valley by eating vegetative grasses meant for cattle. Super winter rains primed soil conditions for a big hatch and their consumption capacity is 'devastating!' I must check on my kinfolk who run summer cattle up near Greenville, which may not be green with The Devastator munching on it.

Most literature readers know about the great locust plagues in past times around the Mid East, where swarms of billions would take to the air, flying long distances to new garden fields. Some people are not informed that grasshoppers and locusts are the same creature, with only a slight transformation to the locust stage of stronger wings and a darker color. Regular grasshoppers can fly short distances with a strong leap and a strained, fluttery flight, but not so strongly as to darken the sky for miles like the locust invaders.

There are no locust swarms in America at the moment, but a hundred years ago there was a Rocky Mountain Locust that plagued the plains. Insecticides have largely subdued concentrations of insects, maybe to the crisis of destroying helpful insects also. It's somewhat like my Oakland, CA Wildlife Refuge Supervisor, Paul Covel, determined to take down a rouge predaceous gull with a .410 shotgun back in 1962, bagging the gull but also killing several coots and a duck in the background. “Didn't even see them as I was focused on the gull!”, he said. Thus it is with insecticides. Insecticide sprays get more than we are aware of.

Total amount of insects in the country are estimated to have dropped by 49% in recent times while human population has doubled in the last 40 years. Spray overkill can be a bad outcome for general insect reduction of useful 'bugs,' [ladybugs, bees, etc] according to an article “The Bugs We Can't Live Without.” In addition, maybe the good some species do is merely being there with their beauty [butterflies, moths, damsel flies] to keep alive aesthetics and mental refreshment. Bees are particularly important in pollinating plants so that we can eat, and who would deny that the honeybee is beautiful.

Even a grasshopper in its better times is an organism of interest. Having strong hind legs to make a considerable jump is rather novel among animals, akin most notably to katydids, crickets, and fleas among insects, and to kangaroos among mammals and frogs among amphibians! Among things grasshoppers are good for is fish bait, and it was an exercise to run down some MO yellow grasshoppers, and in the process get 'tobacco spit' on me. They ball a wad of brown juice in their mouth as a warning. However, all of the 200 western grasshopper species [11,000 world wide], are edible if you wish. [When they are swarming, neither bird or man need go hungry!] I've eaten fried grasshoppers and crickets, and they are crunchy good.

Not so lovely is what a swarm can do to a field of corn. Once I was traveling through Nebraska during a grasshopper siege, and thousands had stripped the corn—even the stalks—right down to the ground. In heavy attacks it is said hoppers will eat the wood on pitchfork handles. Sometimes when it rains it pours...too much.

“Even the tiny grasshopper moves with a hope. Hope that, its next hop will, make it land on a grass which is better than the grass on which it is currently sitting.” --Akhil Prakash