Tag: pests
Mormon Cricket Playlist?
An entertaining news item from the Wall Street Journal:
TUSCARORA, Nev. — The residents of this tiny town, anticipating an imminent attack, will be ready with a perimeter defense. They’ll position their best weapons at regular intervals, faced out toward the desert to repel the assault.
Then they’ll turn up the volume.
Rock music blaring from boomboxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets…the crickets don’t much fancy Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, the townspeople figured out three years ago.
There isn’t any scientific evidence I can find that this will have any effect on the crickets. (Which, technically, are not crickets, but katydids.) But it’s got to be pretty darn entertaining to see!
Intriguingly, a million bucks for Mormon Cricket control was widely mocked in March as “Pork Barrel” spending in the budget. These are people who clearly haven’t seen the insects on the march as a giant swarm. It’s impressive.
When you have a 1-2 inch insect, and you measure density as >15 insects/square yard…that’s a lot of bugs.
What would you suggest for your repelling playlist?
Slim Whitman would be my obvious first choice…..
