![]() ![]() ![]() Kansas farmers battling locusts © Henry Worrall (1825-1902), Wikimedia Commons.īut then, after the appalling rapacious raids in the late 1800s, the Rocky Mountain locust started to wane. The law made no difference to the Rocky Mountain locust. In 1877, the Minnesota Legislature passed the ‘grasshopper draft’: all able-bodied men from 12 to 65 years old should gather locusts for at least one day: failure to comply could result in fines or 10 days in jail. These racing feeding machines had a devastating impact: vast areas of agricultural land became barren, and many families gave up farming and fled to cities in Canada, the lack of fresh vegetables caused outbreaks of scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency in both countries, army troops were mobilized to feed thousands of families. Locust outbreaks were nothing new, but Americans and Canadians were in for an onslaught. The Rocky Mountain locust, a feeding juggernaut © Julius Bien (1826-1909), Wikimedia Commons. The protagonist of such a nightmare: the Rocky Mountain locust ( Melanoplus spretus). Laura had to step on grasshoppers and they smashed squirming and slimy under her feet … ‘The wheat!’ Pa shouted.” ( On the Banks of Plum Creek, 1937). They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads this way and that… Grasshoppers covered the ground, there was not one bare bit to step on. Their claws clung to her skin and her dress. The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm. Here’s how Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), of Little House on the Prairie fame, described her childhood experience with locusts in Minnesota in 1874: “Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered. Inevitably the locusts would come down to earth, devouring any plant in sight in a few hours the farmers’ hard labour, mainly in the form of maize and wheat crops, would be wiped out. A swarm of locusts in Madagascar, tiny in comparison to the ones befalling 1800’s North America © Michel Lecoq, Wikimedia commons. That’s equivalent to 27 million tonnes of moving biomass. Dr Child estimated the swarm to be about 3,000 km long and 180 km wide ( Second Report of the U.S. Signal Corps timed a swarm flying over Plattsmouth, Nebraska, for five days straight, and telegraphed nearby towns for similar sightings. The clouds contained no rain, hail or sand: they were made of locusts, billions of them (locusts are gregarious forms of grasshoppers). These clouds would eventually grow and descend to lower ground, hiding the sun in the middle of the day and filling the air with the sound of millions of scissors snipping away. On summer days, farmers in the prairie regions watched with alarm and hopelessness as black clouds formed in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The Bible never sounded as prescient to Americans and Canadians as in the years 1873-1877. “And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field: And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants…” Exodus 10:5-6, King James Version. ![]()
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