Since I’ve decided to whip myself into shape, my wife decided she would gladly do whatever it took to help so we’ve been going for jogs around the mountains nearby. Thursday, we decided to head up a little further into the mountains and found that maybe that wasn’t the wisest choice.
When we reached the turnout where I wanted to park, we noticed a few thousands of these black dots covering the road. Because we’d had an experience with these critters once before, we knew exactly what we were looking at - shieldbacked katydids. Okay, so we didn’t know that’s the technical name for them - we knew them as mormon crickets. And I mean there were everywhere! The ground was crawling with them and their chirps were quite intense. My wife promptly informed me she was not going for a jog with those giant insects waiting to gnaw her leg off, so, we opted to turn around and head down the road a ways to do our jogging. But not before I jumped out to snap a few pictures - this is certainly impressive! These bugs can actually cause hazardous road conditions when they get too thick as the smashed insect fluids actually make the road like ice - honest truth.
Here is a look at where we wanted to go hiking - you can see how much thicker the bugs get the further up the road you go.
Here’s a close up look at these cute little things.
As we drove away from the infestation of bugs, I knew my mother’s reaction was going to be, “They better not make it down here and eat my garden.” I knew my dad’s reaction was going to be, “That’s a lot of bugs.” (You see, Dad is prety mild and it takes quite a lot to get him riled up over something.) I already had heard my wife’s reaction - but this whole time, I had two thoughts running through my head: could these things possibly cause enough damage to the feed up here as to make the deer and elk look elsewhere for feed? If you’ve ever seen the damage these pests will do, I’m sure you will see some validity in my question - and perhaps even an answer - in which case, I’d be pleased to hear. The other thought running through my mind was - look at all the fish bait crawling around going to waste! Now, I’m not sure if fish are fond of eating a cricket, but imagine my delight when looking up “mormon crickets” on wikipedia and finding out that they’re actually a katydid! While I don’t know if fish eat crickets, just ask any fly fisherman and they’ll tell you how trout love a good katydid! I think this might call for a return trip by myself - just me and my bait bucket.
And, this is why we like to jog in the mountains in the first place.
Loading ...
I’m with your wife on this one - those critters can gnaw off someone elses’ leg….
We had an infestation of “army worms” when I was a kid. They were some sort of caterpillar and they were everywhere, just like in your pictures.
Those pictures look like the mayflies infestations that we get around water in our part of the state. It is horrible.
I bet the fish would tear ‘em up. They love the mayflie hatch, and as the saying goes “match the hatch”.
On that note though I wouldn’t go jogging their either.
Yeah, I’d be turning around and going somewhere else too. Just the thought of one of those jumping on me is enough to give me the willies.