A Nevada Town Has Been Overrun By ‘Mormon Crickets’ That Turn Streets Into Oil Slicks

Mormon Crickets Topshot 2
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The past few years have been chock full of things on roads that aren’t meant to be on roads. Tomatoes, nitric acid, sex toys — that sort of stuff. Normally, it’s the result of a truck crash or a train collision, or something of that sort. However, a small town in Nevada has reduced friction on its roadways for a rather spectacular reason: The whole area is under invasion from Mormon Crickets. Unlike their human counterparts, these insects don’t knock.

KUTV reports that the town of Elko, Nev. has been absolutely overrun with a rather large insect called the “Mormon Cricket.” The things are dawdling down roadways and climbing up walls; you aren’t safe at the grocer, you aren’t safe at the mall. These flightless katydids aren’t actually true crickets, but they are bush crickets, so that’s where they get their name. They’re also an infestation, leaving the town looking mid-apocalyptic. Just have a look:

Holy moly. Mormon Crickets aren’t like ants — you can’t fit ten thousand in a single jar of peanut butter. They take up real space, from walls to roads. Oh, and it’s on the roads where these creepy crawlies can be a real menace. Elko resident Tyeona Damon told Fox 13 News: “They’re impacting my racecar driving because it’s so slick, so to have crickets ruining it is really awkward.”

The big hazard to drivers is how the slimy insides of these bugs get splattered all over the tarmac, reducing grip on the road and making things, um, interesting. Look, I’ve never driven on a thin film of Nickelodeon slime, but I’m pretty sure that’s a rough equivalent to what a gut-coated insect cemetery of a road would be like. Oh, and it gets worse: These things are cannibals. Yep, they eat other Mormon Crickets alive or dead for sustenance, which furthers the roadway problem. After a few hundred of these things get run over on the highway like Grand Theft Auto NPCs, more Mormon Crickets come in, feast on the remains, and get run over themselves. It’s almost like a self-lubricating roadway, in a way.

Mormon Crickets 1

What about paint issues not caused by vehicle-to-vehicle collisions? Sure, Mormon Crickets are flightless, but their entrails can still be slung up from the road, which would most certainly suck to clean from your paintwork (and if left on there a while, I bet it could cause damage due to acidity). Oh, and let’s not forget about underbody cleanliness. Imagine the smell of bug residue on a hot exhaust manifold. Mmm, delicious. Oh, and the insects reportedly defecate all over the place, so that’s nice. Imagine having to scrape bug poo off your shoes every time you went somewhere. I mean, it’s better than scraping human poo off your shoes, but still.

In addition to vehicular mayhem and general ickyness, Mormon Crickets emit a pungent aroma when squashed, can damage vegetation, and kill crops. The worst part? This nightmare won’t be over anytime soon. Mormon Crickets have a cycle of four to six years, so we could theoretically see two new presidents before Elko escapes the quagmire of squashed insects. To all the residents of Elko: Good luck. We’re pulling for you. Especially you, poor racecar driver.

(Photo credits: KUTV, Oregon Department of Agriculture)

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66 thoughts on “A Nevada Town Has Been Overrun By ‘Mormon Crickets’ That Turn Streets Into Oil Slicks”

  5. Elko’s in eastern Nevada. Can confirm the Mormon Crickets are north of Reno in eastern California and around the Black Rock Desert. Wikipedia says they survive on grasses, but the ones I’ve seen don’t seem to feed on anything but the carcasses of other Mormon Crickets.

      1. Old joke my Mormon father thought was hilarious. When he would take us (seven kids) to a restaurant he’d give the hostess the name Donner for our wait for a table.
        Hostess: “Donner party of eight?”
        Dad (grinning): “It’s about time, we’re starving.”

    1. I see a business opportunity here (or a survival tactic).
      Protein-rich cricket flour.
      The average cost of cricket flour is around $40 per pound.

  7. How many Mormons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

    It depends on how many show up with delicious refreshments for the occasion.

  8. As a kid we lived in a Mississippi River town that had an annual shadfly days festival. We weren’t there during a “bad year” where the plows were dispatched, but normal years were still bad enough for me to commiserate with what these folks are going through.

    I learned to ride my bike without training wheels a few weeks before the shadflies hatched. I can tell you with certainty that grass on the road has nothing on bug guts. Also, if you want road rash to be really repulsive, a thick coating of bugs in it will do that.

    1. Damnation Alley came out right before we moved to southern Japan where they have giant flying cockroaches.
      Armored flesh-eating + flying = nightmare fuel

  11. I remember a couple summers in the late 80’s where the frogs at night were so bad on the rural highways leading to the grandparent’s farm, that my dad had to turn off cruise control.

    I’ll never forget the thumping sound as they hit the bottom of the car, and were flung up in the wheel wells.

    1. Great.. now I have the word oxy-mormon floating around in my brain. I’m gonna be trying to think of one all night.
      (There are no jumbo shrimp in the Great Salt Lake)

      1. Brine shrimp only in the Great Salt Lake, no?
        [as my furry denizens are unappreciative of fine humor, you guys will be subjected to my Dad Jokes]

  16. Being from Wisconsin my first thought was to get out the snow plows. Then I remembered this is Nevada, and depending where this town is, they might not have snow plows. Borrow some plows from the mountain folk?

  18. I’m in Nevada and I’ve been following this. Every single article/post paraphrases this. “These flightless katydids aren’t actually true crickets, but they are bush crickets, so that’s where they get their name.”

    Okay, that’s where the got their LAST name. But none of these hard-hitting journalists seems able to tell my why they got their first name from LDS church members.

      1. It’s a positive story…why suppress it. Crickets (not crickets) came to eat the crops of early settlers, prayer happened, seagulls came in and chowed, seagull is state bird, crickets get nickname. What’s to hide? It’s more likely the other way around, where media outlets are so afraid of putting any religiosity in their reporting because of the strong polarization around the issue right now. Less suppression, more cowardice.

        1. Fair point. It’s not like the LDS church has ever been secretive about anything throughout their history.
          (Gobs of sarcasm intended)

        2. That’s exactly what I was thinking.

          Building on that thought, I wonder if the dramatic reduction of The Great Salt Lake’s water levels has anything to do with the increased Mormon Cricket population. Less lake=less gulls=more crickets.

          One of those things that make you go “Hmmm.”

          1. It’s more likely the heavy winter rains in Nevada and Utah, and subsequent lush vegetation which resulted, that caused the heavy infestation. In arid regions that have sporadic rainfall, there are always insect species that wait to hatch until a heavy rain event. That’s how locusts work. These crickets are very much like locusts.

        3. I think I remember learning in Sunday school that the gulls stuffed themselves with crickets, flew off and puked them up, then came back for more. Sorry, I see rustbuckets already offered this tidbit further down.

        4. I don’t think it’s even cowardice or any other ill intentions—reporters covering it may not have room for or know the full backstory, either. I’m guessing the locals know it, but don’t wanna rehash it for a local audience that also knows it, and the nationals just don’t know it and end up describing the bugs as quickly as possible so they can move on to the main point of the story (the yuck-factor).

          2. That was my other thought, that all the outlets covering it are most likely local and don’t really have a need to rehash the story. of course, at least In Utah, the population has doubled in 30 years largely from out of state growth, pretty much the same with all the mountain west, so it might not be as widely known anymore.

  19. Okay this is in Nevada – a place that is fairly sunny.

    They could build an enormous solar-powered bug zapper. A batch of crickets will land, get fried and create a smell, thus bringing another batch to get fried, et cetera.

    They’ll need to keep some large flamethrowers handy: periodic incineration of the detritus will ensure good cricket contact with the zapper.

      1. It’s because the early Mormon settlers experienced a horrendous plague of these crickets destroying all their crops. They prayed for help and a humongous flock of seagulls flew in and seriously gorged themselves on the crickets. As in, seagulls everywhere puking up crickets and eating more. In like one day, the entire plague of crickets was done.

        1. “seagulls flew in and seriously gorged themselves on the crickets. As in, seagulls everywhere puking up crickets and eating more”

          Yup, the noble California Gull.

  21. I was driving back from McCall, Idaho a couple weeks back and the Mormon cricket migration definitely started early here. It’s not great.

    And I definitely washed my car immediately afterward.

      1. I just realized that it wasn’t coming back from McCall, but Idaho City. I went to both recently. It was Highway 21, and the worst of it was a little north of Lucky Peak Reservoir.

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