[AT] O/T 17 year locusts

Cecil E Monson cmonson at hvc.rr.com
Mon Jun 7 04:52:23 PDT 2004


	Gil and Ralph, I remember back when I was a little kid in the
1930s (it was Dustbowl time then) we had almost a plague of grasshoppers
in southern Minnesota. It worried my father quite a bit because they
literally stripped crops of leaves. I don't think there was anything to
spray them with back then and they just seemed to go away on their own
as soon as the rains came back a few years later.

	We had insects and tree frogs or something back then that
chirped and cheeped something awful in the evenings. They made quite
a racket - so loud sometimes it was hard to hear over the noise of
them. The cicadas make a similar loud sound that seemingly goes on
forever and never stops. We have something similar here by our pond
every summer that Lucille calls "the peepers". I think they are those
little tree frogs that sound like they are plugged into loudspeakers.

Cecil

> I hope those cicadas you guys have there do not eat like our hordes of
> grasshoppers did last summer. I think they might be related but I don't
> recall much sound from the hoppers. Now crickets are a different story (or
> song). Crickets have a real rythmic chirping that some people do find
> annoying. I hardly notice them and they don't bother me at all.
> So far I don't think this year's crop of grasshoppers have hatched , at
> least I haven't seen any yet. The predictions are not good though. With the
> high population last year they laid plenty of eggs just waiting in the
> ground to hatch. The cool spring has delayed them but any day now I expect
> to see the little green hoppers starting to feed on the new crops growing in
> the fields.
> 
> Ralph in Sask.


-- 
The nicest thing about telling the truth is you never have to wonder
what you said.

Cecil E Monson
Lucille Hand-Monson
Mountainville, New York   Just a little east of the North Pole

Allis Chalmers tractors and equipment

Free advice




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