HAIL WEEVIL, HAIL HYDRA
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Everyone in Alabama knows about Enterprise’s boll weevil statue.
It’s the story behind the statue, of what the statue means, of the 100 years of misery and desperation that are far more interesting. So, let’s talk about that first.
The most destructive pest in American history was not the swarm of 17-year locusts that devoured most of the Midwest in the 1870s and 1920s. That seems inconceivable, since those pestilential insects caused mass famine, livestock die-offs, and even population migrations.