The State of Nevada in the US have uninvited visitors. A large insect called Mormon crickets have descended across Nevada giving a hard time for the residents. The giant bugs have blanketed roadways and buildings, driveways and backyards thereby fueling nightmares, reports say.
Though the latest outbreak of the hard-shelled insects started several years ago, it gained national attention this week after residents in Elko, one of the cities affected, went viral with their cricket videos, NBC News reports.
The report quoted Ted Verras, an Elko resident of nearly 15 years as saying that the outbreak appears to have worsened over the past several years.
Local infestations can get so severe, he said, that families have found themselves unable to enter their homes. The crickets also pose safety hazards out on the roads, the report added.
According to The Guardian, despite their name, the insects are not biologically crickets but technically large shield-backed katydids that closely resemble grasshoppers, according to the University of Nevada, Reno. They don’t fly, and instead walk or hop.
They lay eggs in the summer, which lie dormant in the winter and then hatch in the spring. But this year, due to an unusually rainy winter, the hatchlings were delayed. The large number of insects moving across Nevada can remain at their peak for four to six years, before being brought back under control by other insects and predators, Knight told The Guardian.
“The band of crickets in Elko [Nevada] is probably a thousand acres, and we’ve had bands even bigger than that,” he said. “The drought is probably what triggered them to start hatching. Once they do they have the upper hand, so their populations increase for several years then drop off," Knight added.