‘The gutters were filled with cricket juice’: Plague of pests creating havoc in Nevada

ADELLA HARDING Elko Daily Free Press

ELKO, Nev. — Jiminy Cricket! The Mormon crickets are invading Nevada’s Elko County, and their stampede over a hospital forced the creation of a Cricket Patrol to help visitors and patients get inside.

The patrol is using leaf blowers and brooms against the crickets to clear the way for those heading into the hospital, but no chemicals, spokesman Steve Burrows said. Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital is using temporary staff for the patrol.

<p>Mormon crickets are swept from an entrance to Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital earlier this month as the latest invasion continues in Elko, Nevada.</p> <p>  </p>

Jeff Mullins, Elko Daily Free Press

Mormon crickets are swept from an entrance to Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital earlier this month as the latest invasion continues in Elko, Nevada.

  

“Some folks have a real aversion to crickets,” he said.

The visiting crickets seem to prefer the sidewalks and walls of the hospital this time rather than the parking lot, but in the big invasion of 2003, the hospital had to use golf carts to get people from their cars to the hospital, he said.

The hospital is just one example of the cricket invasion that involves slippery driving on highways and byways that calls for caution, and the state’s leading expert, Jeff Knight, told Elko County commissioners June 7 that baiting against the crickets started May 29.

He said the crickets are in Washoe, Pershing, Humboldt, Lander, Eureka and Elko counties, and they “made a very late hatch,” so they are smaller and only half grown — so far. 

Knight told county commissioners his crew has been baiting in the county but his department can only bait on public land, and restricts applications to once a year to an area. Federal rules have “totally handicapped us,” he told commissioners.

“I understand you are hemmed in by regulations and hemmed in by environmentalists,” Commissioner Delmo Andreozzi said, suggesting activists should visit the Elko hospital “for a first-hand experience” with Mormon crickets. “I went to a meeting at the hospital, and the gutters were filled with cricket juice.”

With the Nevada Department of Agriculture restricted to public land, that means private property owners need to take their own steps against the infestation.

Mormon crickets have infested Elko County over the years, but they are cyclical. Knight said there is a four-to-six-year cycle, “and then they go away.” The dormant period in Elko County was 2007 to 2019, and then they started coming back, although not as heavily as this year.

Mormon crickets can’t fly but they can travel a mile a day and up to 50 miles during a single season, destroying sagebrush, grasses, small grains, alfalfa and vegetable crops along their way.

Knight also reported that clear-wing grasshoppers are making an appearance in Elko County, but so far the crop-imperiling pests have been seen only on private land.  

“In fact, I’ll take Mormon crickets over grasshoppers any day as far as any damage that is done,” Knight said.

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