Toiyabe Cricket Crowd

[MarkBC]

Does anyone here know much about crickets?
Driving over Austin Summit then Bob Scott Summit a few minutes ago there were hoards of big black crickets all over the road! (maybe on the dirt, too, but I only saw them on the pavement).
Anyone ever see such a crescendo of crickets before?
Do they hatch out en masse like the cicadas famously did back east this spring?

I know I could look this up, but maybe more fun if someone already knows the explanation (without looking it up).


(extreme crop of a fone foto taken from my car)

 

[ski3pin]

Mormon Crickets, yup Austin is a great place for them. They are cicadas like the ones back east. Many times over the Toiyabes it has been slippery tracks through the slime. The mormon cricket invasion, a little more often then 17 years. The slime stinks too.

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Interesting Mark. I don't have any info but would be fun to know.
Frank

 

[MarkBC]

Interesting, thanks, Mr 3pin.
I don't recall seeing these critters before, though I've been through here many many times. Maybe I rarely am here this time of year...

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Monte I remember you just talking about them from one of your TRs
Frank

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Mark I see we are getting duplicates.
My last 2 replies tried to do that.
I just didn't hit reply a second time.
The post does through but doesn't show it.
Frank

 

[DavidGraves]

They can be very slippery...a traffic hazard.

Are they in fact the historical referenced Mormon scourge ?

David Graves

 

[MarkBC]

The 'crowd' I observed this afternoon must have been a small hoard. Their numbers, crickets-per-area, wasn't high enough to be a slick hazard.

 

[ski3pin]

You haven't lived until you have driven through hundreds of thousands. It does scrub off the truck fairly easily. Harder if you allow it to bake on.

 

[pvstoy]

Mormon Crickets, yep... they just walk every where as they don't fly. They will eat their own dead. One year on Carroll summit there were so many of them the snow plows had to come out and plow the roads due to slippery accidents.