Blood-red Mormon crickets invade US town, as residents fight back
- The cannibalistic insects leave a horrible stench akin to burning flesh, and their carcasses are everywhere, covering roads and making them slippery to drive on
- Residents and workers have tried to use brooms, leaf blowers, pressure washers and snow ploughs to get rid of the crickets, only for them to return
Dana Dolan was driving through her small Nevada hometown when she thought she had come upon a gory crash. The ground surrounding Elko’s stretch of Interstate 80 looked as if it had been covered in blood. As the red colour shifted and moved, she realised instead it was an infiltration of crickets, some bigger than her thumb.
“It’s almost like a biblical plague,” Dolan said, laughing at the absurdity of the situation that is playing out in Elko, where she has lived for six years.
Tens of thousands of Mormon cricket eggs buried about an inch deep in the soil began to hatch in late May and early June. For weeks, the red critters have been invading swathes of northern Nevada and causing chaos, said the state’s long-time entomologist Jeff Knight.
The invasion of the cannibalistic crickets has hit especially hard in Elko, a small town of about 20,000 near Idaho and Utah known for its gold mining.
The big red bugs leave behind a stench so horrible, akin to burning flesh, that it forces residents to plug their noses while driving. The critters stick to tyres and the bottoms of shoes, and their carcasses are everywhere, even in gyms. When they move, it sounds like rain, Dolan says.