There is this insect which is so scary that it could wipe out populations!
In fact in the olden days it used to cause severe famine!
The most interesting thing though was how literally by accident, the whole swarm was handled!
Read on!
Without further ado I can tell you that the insect is the LOCUST!
In the book At Home: by Bill Bryson, while on a stroll in his backyard garden; Bill tells about the great locusts and in particular about the plague!
The Locust Plague of 1874, often called the “Year of the Locust,” was one of the most devastating agricultural disasters in American history.
It laid waste to millions of acres across the Great Plains—primarily affecting Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa—and brought hundreds of thousands of homesteaders to the brink of starvation.
The culprits were Rocky Mountain locusts (Melanoplus spretus), an insect species that is now entirely extinct but at the time bred in the millions along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains!
The most scary part of the locusts is the SWARM! They are like the HORDE of zombies you see in the WALKING DEAD!
The plague began in the summer of 1874 when a severe drought combined with an unusually warm spring created perfect breeding conditions.
In July and August, massive swarms took to the air, riding strong winds from the northwest. Survivors described them as looking like a fast-moving, ominous black storm cloud.
The swarms were so dense that they completely blocked out the sun for hours, plunging the midday plains into twilight!
People reported a roaring sound “like a roaring fire or a passing train” caused by the collective scraping of trillions of insect wings.
When the swarms descended, they fell like a heavy, blinding snowstorm. They blanketed everything—ground, houses, trees, and crops—several inches deep.
But the surprising part (as if this was not surprising enough!) was that the swarm was behaving like single entity! LIke a single huge monster with head and body! It has been noted that the swarm was so coordinated that if two swarms cross, they would fly through and reconnect in the same way!
The worst part was that they ate! Or rather what they did not!
Rocky Mountain locusts were voracious and caused total devastation!
Once they landed, they consumed nearly every organic thing in sight.
A field of lush corn could be reduced to completely bare dirt stalks in less than two hours!
They devoured corn, wheat, barley, garden vegetables, and the leaves off trees!
The bizarre part was what they did not spare!
Since they lacked moisture from the drought, they ate things entirely unrelated to food!
They chewed through wooden tool handles, sheep’s wool (straight off the sheep’s back!), clothing hanging on lines, dynamic leather horse harnesses, and even the wooden siding of homes!
A sheep would be rendered without the wool in a matter of minutes! The best (or rather the worst!) wool sheering machine!
Then if you thought that the water was spared well then wishful thinking was not the forte in 1874!
The final straw were the Fouled Water bodies!
Wells and streams became choked with drowning insects, turning the water putrid and rendering it completely undrinkable for humans and livestock!
All caused by an insect you can hit and squeeze with your left hand! But then that is the power of numbers! When insects join together they can destroy everything!
And when a clever person decides he or she can change the world! Like Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman!
Now wait for 24 hours to know how the problem was solved but don’t lose sleep over it!
Shubh ratri…
