Mormon Crickets!!! (I
25 April 2006 by King Retard
Something you should know about me: I’ve always been fascinated (and by fascinated I mean completely freaked out) by the Mormon Church. In the spirit of one of the freakiest religions out there, I came acorss this article about MORMON CRICKETS!!! Umm, not sure what makes them Mormon, but I’m guessing jizzus revealed himself to them (being a lost tribe of crickets or something) and there was some magic glasses, or something.
RENO, Nev. – The threat of being eaten could drive the march of Mormon crickets as they munch their way across millions of acres in the arid West, new research suggests.
An international group of researchers has been studying the crickets that have invaded much of Nevada, Utah and Idaho in recent years.
They found that the insects that move in large bands survive on salt and protein found in seeds, flowers, dead animals and feces. But when those food sources are absent, the bugs turn to what’s available — each other. The crickets themselves are “walking packages of protein and salt,” the study said.
“We suspect that they also move more because of the chance of being eaten,” said Patrick Lorch, a research biologist with Kent State University.
“You can imagine that if you are at the back of a band of 1 million marching crickets, there is little food left and the cricket in front of you starts to look mighty tasty,” Lorch told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Crickets slowed by injury are particularly vulnerable to being eaten by their brethren, researchers found.
Lorch was among researchers from the United States, England and Australia that conducted the study, published recently by the National Academies of Science.
Also known as flightless katydids, Mormon crickets can destroy 40 percent to 50 percent of the vegetation in their path. About 12 million acres were infested by the insects last year in Nevada.
Lorch said it’s uncertain whether the danger of being eaten from behind really motivates the crickets at the head of the column to step up the pace. The insects are not cognizant, but the danger could be hard wired into their tiny brains, he said.
“We don’t honestly know if they move faster than they would because of the fear of being eaten,” Lorch said. “But that’s the sort of thing we imagine is going on.”horny preteenssluts nastymasturbation dildofucking momsmet girlsboobs bestfucking showercheerleader lesbians Map
25 April 2006, on 12:49 pm
ewwww…this story gives me the jeebies.
It’s like the killer bees that are making their way north into the midwest. *shiver*
25 April 2006, on 1:59 pm
Wasn’t there more posts before this one earlier today? Or has what I did last night not worn off yet?
25 April 2006, on 2:12 pm
Will – I thought I saw a post on the Failings of war on something and when I went back to read it it was gone…so probably the author pulled it for whatever reason.
25 April 2006, on 2:21 pm
Ok, at least I’m not going crazy. Or at least this isn’t evidence of it.
25 April 2006, on 2:24 pm
Will – not unless we both are “losing it” at the same time.
25 April 2006, on 11:49 pm
I must missed the other one you guys were talking about.
27 April 2006, on 6:27 pm
Ok, I’m serious here – that picture is of an L.A based band called “The Mormons”. They came here to Lincoln, NE and opened for my band Labeled. That’s weird…
27 April 2006, on 8:39 pm
Hmmm – since crickets “sing,” and the post is about “Mormon” crickets, and the picture shows “singing Mormons” – could that be the thinking behind choosing this graphic for this post?
27 April 2006, on 9:16 pm
Hey guys, Ryan from Blogger of Jared here.
I don’t absolutely know for certain but I think the reason they are called Mormon crickets is based in part on an event occurred back when the Salt lake Valley was first being settled…
“As spring arrived, pioneer farmers reported with pride that their crops appeared to be doing very well. But April and May frosts leveled some of the crops, and late May brought another devastation—hordes of insects began to destroy the crops. These insects, later dubbed “Mormon crickets,” were as large as a man´s thumb. Not a true cricket but a member of the katydid family, the Mormon cricket has only small wings and cannot fly. Pioneer diarists reported the invaders in the fields as early as May 22. Some described them as numbering in the millions; John Steele wrote that they appeared by the “thousands of tons.” For more than a month, the crickets devastated the fields, devouring the new corn, beans, wheat, pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, melons, and other crops. Farmers battled the crickets with a variety of defensive measures but had little success.
By early June, relief arrived in the form of the seagull. The appearance of gulls was described in a letter of June 9 to Brigham Young in the following manner: “The sea gulls have come in large flocks from the lake and sweep the crickets as they go; it seems the hand of the Lord is in our favor” (Hartley, p. 230). For the next three weeks, gulls appeared daily. They fed on the crickets, drank water, and then regurgitated before eating more crickets. There would be a harvest that year, after all.”
Miracle or typical cycle of nature? Who knows? That’s the source for the name anyway.
You may now resume your God smacking…
Mormon, Out!
27 April 2006, on 10:30 pm
Eve said: “Hmmm – since crickets “sing,” and the post is about “Mormon” crickets, and the picture shows “singing Mormons” – could that be the thinking behind choosing this graphic for this post?”
Sorry, nothing so clever as that. I just found the pic on google and liked it.
27 April 2006, on 10:31 pm
Ryan, thanks for the info about the origin of the name.
27 April 2006, on 11:06 pm
Ryan, yes, thanks for the interesting info.
28 April 2006, on 1:53 am
I just got back from dinner with an English pal of mine who lives here in SF and his daughter, who was visiting from near Bristol. We were waiting on a rather long line outside of one of the most popular Chinese restaurants in the whole durn country, when a guy in front of us asked if he could join our group. We were three and he was one and he figured we’d get seated faster as a table of four.
We said sure, where you from? Salt Lake City. Here for a conference. All the other guys were out drinking on the town tonight and he was married so he was the odd man out. Someone had told him he would be remiss if he did not experience House of Nanking… So there he was… Bravely, for a guy who said he was intimidated by Chinese food, about to eat at a place where the chef gives you what he thinks you should eat, not what you order.
Well, it didn’t take long to surmise that the real reason he was out on his own was not because he was married so much as he was Mormon. I introduced myself as an atheist. He took it well. So we sat and we shared a meal together — one which came with no serving spoons and forced us to basically eat from the same plates. Everything was civil. Religion and atheism came up a little… We talked about a few things in a civilized way, but mostly stuck to less contentious topics. He told the story (Mormon folklore, possibly true) about why Mormons cut the ends off of hams when they cook them. (see if you can find that legend and the answer to it, kids!)
At the end of the night, when we said goodbye to our Mormon friend Tom, I shook his hand and said “Jesus would have been proud of us for breaking bread together.” He looked like I was trying to start something. And I said, “No, really… That’s the greatest gesture one can make, right? To sit at the same table with someone, perhaps your ideological opposite, and share a meal?”
He agreed that it was. And off he went into the night. He loved the food, by the way.
28 April 2006, on 11:54 am
Cool story Sean.
28 April 2006, on 12:29 pm
Back to Sean’s story, the more I think about it, this is the kind of thing that needs to happen more often. People like Sean and his new friend Tom, sitting, eating, discussing things as people who may have vasts gulfs of opinion between them, but with something like eating as a reminder that we have more in common than we often remember or care to acknowledge. It sounds like it was possible mainly because Sean is open-minded (i.e. didn’t immediately tune out when he heard “Mormon”) and this guy wasn’t there to preach.
Also, to amend or clarify a statement in my original post, while I have serious problems with a lot of the practices of the LDS church (but for that case churches in general) I try not to prejudge individuals.
28 April 2006, on 12:40 pm
Okay, I’ll confess. I did make one smart-ass remark. When I overheard him tell my English pal he was Mormon (I was talking to the daughter at the time), I turned around and said “Wait, you’re from Salt Lake City and your Mormon? That’s original.”
He blinked and smiled and shrugged it off. He may not have even heard all of it, since others were talking. Anyway, if he didn’t get a little ribbing for that while here in San Francisco, we wouldn’t be doing our job.
28 April 2006, on 1:43 pm
Anyway, if he didn’t get a little ribbing for that while here in San Francisco, we wouldn’t be doing our job
Agreed, and thanks for the story.
In response to KR’s statement about Tom and Sean, I think there’s a lot of Mormons who expect people to be open-minded about our belief system and whatever idiosyncracies come with it, only to turn around and be overzealous in our preaching. It’s not very fair and it makes more enemies than converts.
From this point on I think I’ll call the annoying members of our church who behave that way:
Mormon Crickets.
(You see that? in one fell swoop I brought the whole discussion full circle back to the post. I believe I deserve a golf clap for that one.)
28 April 2006, on 2:12 pm
ryan said:
(You see that? in one fell swoop I brought the whole discussion full circle back to the post. I believe I deserve a golf clap for that one.)
Very good indeed. Let me know when the nickname Mormon Crickets is no longer ironic. I will no longer be afraid to walk down Market St. in SF in the summer (those ties, those buzz cuts, those crazed smiles!)
28 April 2006, on 3:49 pm
Ryan, I like your new use of Mormon crickets. I’m going to use it myself from now on.
29 April 2006, on 3:39 pm
One thing I totally forgot about the story of My Dinner With a Mormom. When I told my English Pal’s daughter — who is 29 years old — that I was an atheist, she said “What’s an atheist?”
This is no country bumpkin. She works for one of the biggest companies in the world and does quite a bit of travelling.
Always a bit of a shock to the system, and a reminder that I do indeed have it good here in San Francisco.
1 May 2006, on 6:51 pm
Sean: When I told my English Pal’s daughter — who is 29 years old — that I was an atheist, she said “What’s an atheist?”
This is no country bumpkin. She works for one of the biggest companies in the world and does quite a bit of travelling.
Hmmm – you sure she wasn’t hitting on you? Some women pretend ignorance with guys they’re interested in to get them talking about themselves. They’ve been told it’s a sure-fire way to “hook” them.
Even if it were true, it wouldn’t mean anything bad about her; most good conversationalists are good listeners first.
1 May 2006, on 6:56 pm
Nope. Her dad was part of the conversation. She did not know what an atheist was. We explained to her that it was someone who did not believe in gawd. She said “Oh, then I’m an atheist!” And her dad asjed, “So you don’t believe in and afterlife?” And she said, “Well, I didn’t say that. I mean, there must be something beyond all this. And I believe there is some kind of power out there that created the universe or something…” In other words, she really hadn’t given it all that much thought. I’ve met other people like that before.
8 May 2006, on 1:56 pm
Oh, I see; I guess there are still people who find the term unfamiliar.