Plague of crickets!

Lancer · June 20, 2003, 09:00

I saw on the news last night that Arizona and Idaho have crickets...billions of them. Crickets everywhere. They said that the squished crickets in the road are slick as ice and causing accidents! Easily freaked out people are freakin out!

Where did they all come from? Does science attempt to explain this?

Anybody out there dealing with the cricket plague?

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 09:45

It simply isn't cricket, old chap.

SlowwHand · June 20, 2003, 09:50

Many years we have the same thing here.
I'm not sure on the cause, but what you cite isn't isolated.
Little bastards ate a tent of mine once.

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 10:00

Sloww writes on short lines
A sort of Texan haiku
Imparting wisdom.

SlowwHand · June 20, 2003, 10:05

Buck Damned Birdseed made some comment once on how I write.
I can't help how I am. God. I can't do anything right around here.

JohnT · June 20, 2003, 10:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Lancer
I saw on the news last night that Arizona and Idaho have crickets...billions of them. Crickets everywhere. They said that the squished crickets in the road are slick as ice and causing accidents! Easily freaked out people are freakin out!

Where did they all come from? Does science attempt to explain this?

Anybody out there dealing with the cricket plague?

As with most non-cyclical insect infestations, mild winters and wet springs tend to lead to population explosions.

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 10:09

Quote:

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Buck Damned Birdseed made some comment once on how I write.
I can't help how I am. God. I can't do anything right around here.

Don't ever change, Sloww.

Don't you like me writing poetry to you?

I've never done a haiku before - I doubt I did it quite right, but at least the 5/7/5 syllable structure is in there.

SlowwHand · June 20, 2003, 10:13

I didn't even remember what a haiku was anymore.
But yes, thank you.

Now, on with the crickets.

DAVOUT · June 20, 2003, 10:29

Quote:

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Many years we have the same thing here.
I'm not sure on the cause, but what you cite isn't isolated.
Little bastards ate a tent of mine once.

Sloww gambled a tent and won a billion crickets.
Eventually the crickets died.

Moral :
Americans should not play cricket.

Ecthy · June 20, 2003, 10:55

can someone write a haiku on me?

Velociryx · June 20, 2003, 10:59

Permanent ink, or the kind you can easily wash off?

-=Vel=-

Ecthy · June 20, 2003, 11:00

Permanent, please. I'm not a wimp.

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 11:04

Our Ecthelion
Emperor of Sputum
Trolls and mocks us all

That's cack. It's hard when your damn name has 4 syllables in it!

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 11:06

This better?:

Andz the German troll
With Green hat and golden bells
Has come back at last.

alva · June 20, 2003, 11:07

From a man who has five.

Idea for a new thread though, write a (friendly

) haiku on fellow apo's

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 11:09

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
From a man who has five.

Yes, but "FP" is only two.

FrustratedPoet · June 20, 2003, 11:10

Whoops ... major threadjack. Sorry Lancer.

Ecthy · June 20, 2003, 13:26

thx guyz

Dis · June 21, 2003, 02:26

also NW Nevada is being invaded

not a problem where I live. I'm sure it's too hot for them

BustaMike · June 21, 2003, 02:30

Actually, grasshoppers are more of a problem than crickets here in Phoenix. Yeah, there's crickets around all the time, but they don't really bug anyone. In the summer here though, we get lots of grasshoppers. This summer has been pretty tame so far, but back in '98 just after El Nino there were trillions of them. I remember leaving Gameworks at 2 in the morning (worked there that summer) and stepping out into the Mills mall parking lot and not being able to see the streetlights because there were so many grasshoppers flying around them. There were probably several hundred million in that parking lot alone. Crickets don't do that crap.

Dis · June 21, 2003, 02:44

actually I mean there was grasshoppers in NW Nevada I think

We have crickets where I live, but not that many.

The Mad Monk · June 21, 2003, 03:02

Quote:

Originally posted by alva
From a man who has five.

Why do you think he's frustrated?

Skanky Burns · June 21, 2003, 06:42

I expected this thread to be about the sport of cricket, but what I found was more entertaining than even that! I thought the poems were supposed to be centered on the seasons though, but I could be wrong.

FrustratedPoet
With a strange entertainment
Delight does he bring.

FrustratedPoet · June 21, 2003, 06:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Skanky Burns I thought the poems were supposed to be centered on the seasons though, but I could be wrong.

You're correct actually ... although the sources I found after googling suggested that although the rules of writing a haiku are very strict in Japanese there is no clear consensus of how they should be written in English.

Quote:

FrustratedPoet
With a strange entertainment
Delight does he bring.

Lancer · June 21, 2003, 07:54

alva · June 21, 2003, 08:41

Lancer get's the award for best use of the : stunned : smiley so far..

Starchild · June 21, 2003, 08:45

Catch the critters and eat them. High protein, low fat, and a peanutty aftertaste.

Immortal Wombat · June 21, 2003, 08:58

I believe I read somewhere that some species of cricket remain in the dormant stage underground for 17 or 19 years before emerging all at once. Nobody knows why, but it was conjectured that they evolved a large prime-number cycle to avoid parasites or predators. Predators with a shorter life-cycle, wouldn't hit the same year as them, because 17/19 are both primes, and the chances of the parasite being in sequence every 19 years is very slim.

But anyway, the upshot of this is that you can frequently get a decade or two of fairly low cricket populations, and then sudden explosions of them every 17 or 19 years. Or maybe its just the plagues of Egypt back to haunt y'all.

Sprayber · June 21, 2003, 11:14

In some parts of Arkansas last year they had a plague of Ladybugs. The ****ers were everywhere. Usually people with gardens like ladybugs but the bastards would get all in your house.

Vandal-1 · June 21, 2003, 12:31

The Rockie mountains have always been subject to cyclical infestions of crickets,grass hoppers and Locust which are usually localized to single river basins.If a wet seasons with alot of forage falls on a seventh year in nieghboring basins well its a bonanza for gaming foul but if you're not a Turkey Tom you'll think its the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.