I'm out of patience, grasshopper!

Grasshoppers are everywhere this summer!  They're on my patio, in my plants, in parking lots, fields, grass, and even hitching a ride on the hood of my patrol car.  It's a grasshopper infestation!!  Seriously, it is - I looked it up!!  The abnormal amount of creepy jumping bugs made me curious enough to do a little digging.

The western states have been experiencing an increasing amount of grasshoppers over the last few years.  This year, of course, is the worst of them.  They are destroying crops (may explain certain issues with Green Acre), eating yards, and just plain freaking people out, including myself.  I'm not making this up, I swear.  A federal survey conducted last fall predicted that 48 million acres of land would be infested this year.

The mobile army of grasshoppers will eat all types of plants.  They are like miniature goats, except much uglier!  They've been known to eat clothing off of clotheslines when their numbers reach infestation levels.  Bring in the knickers folks, I think they've arrived.  While grasshoppers are certainly reaching numbers to be noticed in Ft. Collins, it's far from the worst here.  Areas in Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska have 1,000 grasshopper per square yard.  Eeewww!  Healthy levels are 8 (yes, single digit) per square yard.

Adult grasshoppers can fly miles to find food.   They'll eat half or more of their body weight in foliage per day.  And if the foliage isn't available, in addition to your knickers, they'll eat wood and even paint!  Infestations happen every 30 years or so.  They were prominent in the Dust Bowl days and there were 3.5 trillion of them that showed up in Colorado in 1874.  Eeek!  

Ok, I've given myself the heebie-jeebies and most stop googling.  Darn locusts!  Oh, and grasshoppers can be called locusts once they have reached the swarming stage.  I'm done now.  Really, I am.