Salem, Ore. • Residents of a north-central Oregon town are working together to prevent cricket-like insects from invading their houses and streets and devouring their crops like last year.
April Aamodt remembers hearing hordes of hissing, cannibalistic Mormon crickets when they began taking over the small town of Arlington last year.
“It was awful,” Aamodt said. “My land was infested with thousands of them. I was working from 5:30 in the morning to 9 at night trying to kill crickets.”
Mormon crickets are not actually crickets, but flightless members of the katydid family, closely related to grasshoppers and crickets, the Capital Press reported Thursday.