Killer Earth
Killer Earth
Locusts
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Kat and Vanessa discuss a crazy hatching of locusts that devastated sections of the Great Plains in the 1800s. They also talk about the recent Big Sur landslide and Kat's super hot mugshot.
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Earthquakes, lightning, roaring, rain, tornadoes, zombies in a hurricane.
unknownKiller Earth.
SPEAKER_01Hi, and welcome to Killer Earth. I'm your co-host Vanessa Hill. I'm joined by my best friend and co-host Katherine Gifford. Hi. Hey.
SPEAKER_00How's it going?
SPEAKER_01It's good. How are you?
SPEAKER_00I'm good. I'm excited to be doing this episode.
SPEAKER_01I know. You didn't tell me ahead of what it is.
SPEAKER_00I think at first we were like trying to surprise each other. Then we got into like telling each other what we were doing. But this one I was like, I don't want to tell you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you won't tell me. You're gonna reveal it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's just like this one freaks me out. Like all of them do, but um, this is what I've like dreamed about doing, but I didn't really know if it actually existed. And I came, I like stumbled upon it and I was like, Whoa, this is crazy. So oh my god, I'm so curious.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, how's your week been? Good. I think before we start, um, I just wanted to touch on this insane landslide in Big Sar. Oh my gosh, yeah. Right? It's crazy. So I saw a drone video on TikTok, and then you and I spoke that the same night that I that I saw it on TikTok, and you were like, Oh, like I think didn't you say your sister sent you something?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she sent it to me, and it's like part of the highway. It's so it's highway one. That's the one I was on when I went with her. What if that had been me?
SPEAKER_01I oh so back in 2011, I took a road trip from I did Highway One from San Diego to San Francisco. Oh, with my brother. It was beautiful with my brother Owen and my boyfriend at the time. And my family lives in San Diego, so we we we visited them first, and my aunt was saying to us at the time, you know, we love going up to Big Sur, but there's landslides and they block, they'll block the road, and then you you get to them and you have to turn around, and there's not a lot of ways to like turn off of Highway One, right? So it's really aggravating when you try to go up there. And we didn't run into any of that, but um so that area of Big Sur, you're just like kind of on this road on a cliff.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And there's right by the ocean, like you can't really do much.
SPEAKER_01Right. And like you just you're just you there's not a lot of options to like turn right and go take an take an alternate route. If if there's a blockage of any kind, you have to just turn around and go back. Um and it really is like this windy, like cliff side road.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of like disorienting, like when you're on it for a while, like just because of all the twists and turns. And it's like I haven't like personally had to drive it. Like my sister's boyfriend when we did it in October. Um, she I mean, sorry, he was driving, so I was like, thank goodness, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's the it's like one of the most beautiful drives.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's amazing, yeah. And unfortunately, when I went, you know, all the parks were closed because of COVID, and also there was the fires going on. So I was really bummed because we didn't really get to go and like see all the national parks, but the drive was worth it.
SPEAKER_01So I recommend it to anyone, yeah, it's really cool. Um, so the landslide happened. Um it's like a 150-foot gap in the highway. And if you if you haven't seen it, like I know you and I have, but anyone listening, if you if like Google it, because it's truly crazy looking.
SPEAKER_00Maybe we could like share it on our story on Instagram or something, or yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's really crazy.
SPEAKER_01It's just this chunk of a highway and like a like just pummeling to down a cliff into the ocean.
SPEAKER_00No one was on it, right? When that happened, no, no, no one no one was killed or anything.
SPEAKER_01But can you imagine how many people take that highway and like you're it's not a densely populated area, and I I mean there's obviously traffic there, but it's not a lot of traffic.
SPEAKER_00But think about if you're going at night and it like it had just happened and you didn't really see it.
SPEAKER_01I know, and I mean, like, thank god no just drove off a cliff. Like, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_00What are they gonna do? Probably just like build a bridge or something to fix it.
SPEAKER_01I was reading an article tonight about how they're going to just like totally reconstruct.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow. So you're gonna yeah, so people can't really travel to and from in that area, I guess.
SPEAKER_01I don't even I don't even understand how they're going to put the highway back together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because there's like no land that like slips there's no earth on which to build a road.
SPEAKER_01It's completely just it's crazy looking.
SPEAKER_00That's why I'm thinking maybe a bridge, but also I'd be I'd be afraid of the areas, like you know, like I'm not saying this right. I'd be afraid of the sides of it, the sides of the cliff or the where it happened, if that makes sense. Like is that gonna erode too?
SPEAKER_01I mean, that whole highway is I think especially in the big Sur area is very fragile.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, that like really I didn't really know that that could happen. I guess I wasn't educated on it. Um, in that area, I'm sure. I mean, it makes sense, but I think I would have like thought a little bit more about that if I yeah, before I went, you know, I just like didn't have that in my mind, but yeah, that's insane.
SPEAKER_01It's also I think it's close to like the bridge, the famous bridge and big little lies. Yeah, but which they like take their children to school and go over the bridge, when in reality, like they would never be going over that bridge, yeah. From their home to their school.
SPEAKER_00Well, in reality, they'd never be going over the bridge because they were based in San Luis Obispo, and that was like Big Sur, which is like so far away. So I'm like, do you really travel like two to three hours to take your kids to school?
SPEAKER_01Right, they had to get the bridge in. So good though. Great show. So we'll we'll f we'll keep following that uh story. I really, really want to know how they're gonna put the road back.
SPEAKER_00Me too. Good for those people that know how to do such a thing, those engineers, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01So should we uh get into it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's get into it. All right, okay. So um I am going to tell you all the story of the year of the locusts, 1874. What do you know about this?
SPEAKER_01I mean vaguely, but yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00This is what I meant when I was like, I've dreamt of something. Yeah. Like I've dreamt of something like this in my head. Yeah. But like I didn't know it actually existed. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna like research this. So you didn't you didn't know you didn't know locusts existed, or like no, like something like this, like actually existed. Like, you know how you hear about like in the Bible, if you're like religious, like that um there's like you know, swarms of like insects that come down and like basically ruin your life.
SPEAKER_01Well, so every God, I'm gonna sound so stupid right now, but I know that there are like locust hatchings every however many years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And but like this 1874 is the worst like hatchingslash like disaster in locus history, or do it in history. Okay. So my sources um were history.net, I'm sorry, history net.com, uh, Cansipedia Historical Society, Advancing Earth and Space Science Blogosphere, um, Wikipedia, Timeline.com, and Oxford Academic Bioscience. Impressive. Yeah, thanks. Okay, so I'm gonna bring it back a little bit before this like happened because let's just face it, the 1800s were really tough. Terrible. Who would yeah? I was thinking about this. I was like, we're so lucky. Like, I don't know how I'd go and like scrounge for food outside every day. Like pick berries and find some kind of meat, and without you know, I mean, some people were like living in towns and cities weren't doing that in the 1800s, but well, I mean they had like maybe a grocery store, but like you think like you know, I feel like everyone smelled really bad, everyone had horrible breath.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, everyone was j would just like die at age 40 for stupid reasons.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, so I'm just gonna like give some perspective on how it was going in like the 1950s, and where where are we?
SPEAKER_01What location?
SPEAKER_00We're yes, thank you for asking. We are in the United States in this story, um, in the Great Plains. Um, so like everything from like the Dakotas down to Texas, essentially.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um so 1850s to 1860s, just a little bit of background, which I found really interesting, um, just to set the scene. Um, so there was like a really bad drought um during these years. Um, and so cyclical variations in wind and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean may have contributed to a drought that played an important role in the outcome of the US Civil War, which I thought was really weird. Like this drought like affected how the war went.
SPEAKER_02Huh.
SPEAKER_00Um, they um so the El Nino, which I know that you're really good at this, like El Nino and El Niña. I actually like didn't really know it's like the difference. Oh, sorry, La Nina. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01It's a feminine pronoun for the storms or yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, so I just like I was learning about this because I always just like kind of said I knew what it was, but really didn't. Um, so the El Nino, um, which is the southern oscillation, um, is a term for the cyclical variation in winds and sea surface temperatures that occur in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. Um, this includes the warm phase called El Nino and the cool phase called La Niña, each lasting a few months and recurring every few years.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00That's just a little, yeah. Um, these two phases affect the direction of storm tracks from the Pacific and in turn influence how much rain falls, especially over the southwest. Um, so a body of previous research uh has shown that the stronger La Niña periods are, uh, the more it causes severe droughts in the United States and into Mexico, like the US Southwest more so um and Mexico. So uh research determined La Niña was the culprit of this drought in the 1850s to 60s uh range uh by looking at the International Tree Ring Data Bank, which is a public database of information um of tree ring samples around the world. So um tree ring tree rings reveal past climate conditions by the thickness of year's growth. So like a thick tree ring means that the year um was like a had a lot of rain. And yeah, and um, you know, if there was like a thin ring, it was um a drought. And they had to look at tree rings, like in our day and age when, you know, because this was again back in 1860 to 1865. So like this is their scientific way of being like, so how did that you know, what was going on with that drought? That's how they were able to determine, like, okay, there was a bunch of thin rings, so they didn't have a lot of rain, and we also know that that came from uh La Niña. So I found that to be interesting.
SPEAKER_01And so, okay, and this is during the Civil War.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the the Civil War started in 1861 and ended in 1865.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and they named this drought the Civil War drought.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I did not know of this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay, so this drought is infamous um for its effects in the US Southwest and parts of the Great Plains because it led to near extinction extinction of the American bison and played an important role in changing the course of the Civil War by causing food and water shortages, um, which slowed the advance of uh part of the Confederate army in 1862.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So that's how it like affected the war. Like the Confederate army was kind of stumped, like a lot of it because they were, you know, they had no food or water. Oh, and bison were like uh literally about to be extinct because the drought was so bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, so that was a cool little thing I learned.
SPEAKER_01That is interesting. So yeah, I mean the the um the I've I don't feel like we learn about this in history class. Nope. But like one effect of the Confederates losing is like they didn't have adequate food, it sounds like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm laughing actually because in like I know, I'm like, why are you laughing? I'm making a point. I know that's a good point. I'm sorry, I went into my head because my history classes were so corrupt. Um basically, remember I told you that like we in Texas, like, and my my buddy up here, Seth, um, who lives like in Maine and is from the North, he actually like when he was little had to go live in Houston for a while. And we both like found like we both discovered that like our history lessons basically said that the South and the North and the Civil War was just like eh, it was a good agreement. We just kind of, you know, like we just like made up. And I'm like, that's not how it happened. Like, but that's what like literally people in Texas like teach you. It doesn't say like the North kicked your ass.
SPEAKER_01So um my daughter's father is from Florida, and he told me that growing up in school, they didn't even really call the Civil War the Civil War. Yeah, they called it like the war of northern aggression. I'm like everything all of their like, and this was I mean, so he was in elementary school in the 90s, like we yeah, like same as me. So he said that um, you know, it was all about how the north was like pressing the south and you know, taxing them and trying to like take their rights away and it had nothing to do with slavery. It was like that's what they taught all those kids.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, that's exactly like how it went for us. It was like I always thought the civil war was just like this, like you know, nice like peace treaty, and like everything was good to go.
SPEAKER_01No, and so it and you know, I went to you know, I grew up in Vermont. We learned in high school that like we were the good guys, you guys were the bad guys, you guys were racist pieces of shit. We were trying to live the slaves, like you guys suck.
SPEAKER_00Essentially, that's better. Yeah, yeah, but they were like, No, you guys are really good. It's just you know, it was just a misunderstanding. Like, let's let's just make peace. And I'm like, I don't think that's how it went, but literally, yeah, that's hilarious. Like, even like like I said, my friend Seth was like, I think he was in class and actually said, Um, actually, that's really not what happened. Like, actually spoke up and like they didn't like that.
SPEAKER_01I don't know what happened, but well, didn't wasn't it in Texas where they started banning Harry Potter? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Probably, it sounds right.
SPEAKER_01Your state is fucked.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god. I mean, I'll I'm a Texan true and through, and I love Texas, but no, Texas is cool, they have their problems.
SPEAKER_01They have some maybe back in the 90s they had some issues with they have a lot of issues still.
SPEAKER_00Like legalize marijuana, please.
SPEAKER_01I know we're going off on such a tangent, but sorry, what you went through when you were arrested for having a little bit of weed on you when you were what like 22? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I had like, and I wasn't even like smoking it. Like Pete, like we I was like by my car, and a cop on a bicycle came by and was like, I'm gonna search you. And I was like stupid and didn't say no.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00And so I was like, okay, go for it. And he found um a little bit of marijuana in my car, which I wasn't even like driving and smoking around. Like I was parked, and then yeah, I got arrested.
SPEAKER_01And also for anyone who's listening, Kat is on a website, it's like the 50 hottest, and she's like so cute, and her mascara is like smudged under her eye.
SPEAKER_00She just looks like I got a teardrop tattoo. Or no, I look like I got like a bruise, or I don't know. But it was hell, I had a probation officer for a year, but man, it was hot. I mean, your mugshot was really hot. I mean, that was like my prime, man.
SPEAKER_01You know, that was all that was our prime all of our primes in our early 20s.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, anyway, but yeah, I mean, it was stupid, and I, you know, whatever. Didn't like I'm proud of who I am, regardless. So, you know, and I'm really proud of my mother. I show everyone.
SPEAKER_01It's not uh like a a stain on your reputation or your your character for having a little bit of pot, like it's legal now everywhere.
SPEAKER_00It's so that we live stupid. I know. Uh, anyways, sorry, we just went into a whole okay, yeah. So civil, so drought. Okay, keep going. All right, it's good though. It's good to tell nice little tales. Um, okay. So after um, you know, they had this misunderstanding and everything got cleared up, so so they say in Texas. Um, it was eight, like we're going, so I just wanted to like give a little brief history. So already things are pretty rough, like in the 1850s to 60s. Um, but so now we're skipping ahead to 1874. Um, and I guess like people at this time after the Civil War started to kind of feel better and more comfortable. Um, bison was starting to kind of like repopulate because the drought like obviously went away and we had rains and stuff like that. But um, so after the Civil War, many settlers came to the Great Plains in hopes of finding inexpensive land and a better life. Um, so by 1874, many of these newly arrived families had settled the prairie and planted their crops. Um, during the spring and early summer of this year, um, the plains experienced sufficient rains and the farmers looked forward to the harvest. Um, however, during that uh the heat of the summer, a drought occurred. And this drought was also called by La Niña, and it sucked and it sucked, but it was a little less severe than the Civil War drought. Um, but however, things were about to get way worse. Oh shit. Yeah, this drought created the perfect condition for rocky mountain locust swarms to form and come to the Great Plains. Wow. Okay. Um so basically, um, why do locusts love drought? Um, which they do. Um, the dry conditions increase the nutritional value of vegetation due to a concentration of sugars and nutrients and reduces plant defenses. Um, the dry conditions also reduce fungal diseases that attack locusts. So when you have like all that moisture on the ground and there's like mold. Yeah. Um, the accompanying heat accelerates locust uh maturation, which means process of growing up, which I that might make sense to you, but I had to look that up. I was like, I know what maturation. Mature is, but what's maturation? But that's a word.
SPEAKER_02Huh. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it means the process of growing up. I did know that. Oh, cool. Because it's just like the noun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The adjective. Right. That's yeah. Um, but it helps uh it helps them win the battle against predators. So like that's why these locusts were like, hell yeah, let's perfect conditions for them.
SPEAKER_01Ew. What does a fucking locust even look like?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so it's a it's basically a grasshopper. Okay, like a type of grasshopper. That's what I thought. And um, I think they're like a little bit shorter than a grasshopper, but like, yeah, they're grasshoppers are cool looking. I actually love grasshoppers.
SPEAKER_01I think they're so cool. I like they all look like they should have like a top hat on. I know. Isn't that like a character?
SPEAKER_00No, that's the frog. Hello, my baby, hello my honey, hello, my ragtime gal. I know that whole song, don't ask me why. I really do. It's amazing. Um, um, yeah, but like they're really cool, and I've yeah, I just wouldn't I think locusts are a little bit more like ugly.
SPEAKER_01I like looked at pictures, but they're like the ugly version of the grasshoppers, yeah. And they do, you know, grasshoppers are helpful. Locusts are, I don't think they are.
SPEAKER_00That's a really good question. I'm sure they're like contribute somehow to the environment, but um, not in this way. Okay. Um so also during a drought, locusts group in small areas and remaining lush vegetation, like watered farms. Um, so they like get together there and the population density is needed for the locust to transform into its uh migratory, which is swarming. So I guess like when they like gather in small areas, they start reproducing even faster. Um okay. So the Rocky Mountain locusts um had also caused farm damage in Maine from 1743 to 1756. And yeah, and in Vermont in 1797 to 1798. Okay, which I found interesting. And this is like this is just like background information. So these these pests have been like around even in the 1700s, and they caused a lot of damage in Maine and Vermont, which I found interesting. Um, but the uh so the locusts became more of a problem in the 19th century as farming expanded westward into the grasshoppers' favored habitat. So they've always been around and they did affect other states, but like because farming expanded in the Great Plains, that's like where they really thrived. Um outbreaks of varying severity emerged in 1828, 1838, 1846, and in 1855, affecting areas throughout the West. Um, plagues visited Minnesota in 1856 uh through 1857 and again in 1865, and Nebraska suffered repeated infestations between 1856 and 1874. So that's just like some more information about like how these uh locusts like plagued different parts um before 1874. So they've been around, but this was by far like the worst. Um, so anybody also I forgot to say, if you guys are like hungry and want to make a meal after this, I would just like pause and then listen to this after because like this just it's about to get gross.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's gonna get real.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. And I'm just like one that like I'm a I just can't get grossed out by like bug stuff before I eat. So I just wanted to warn people. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so it all started in um June of 1874. Again, we're in the Great Plains. Um, trillions, and I'm this is a real number, like well, obviously, but trillions of Rocky Mountain locusts descended on the Great Plains from Montana across to Minnesota and down to Texas.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so where do they come from? Like um, where are they coming from the ground? Are they hatching out of the ground? Like cicadas.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a really good question. I know that they lay eggs in the ground, so yeah, that's like where they yeah, and they hatch in the ground. I just don't know they're coming from the ground. I think so. Don't quote me on that.
SPEAKER_01They fly in these big swarms, like you said.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they like they mature and then like fly around and like um okay. Yeah, so I I don't know the process of like how they're if they're like buried in the ground and then they hatch and come up. I I don't know. I should have looked that up, sorry. Um okay, they are this they were the size of a pinky finger, and they ravaged crops on farmland, and they also devoured not only crops, but nearly any organic material, including sawdust, leather, and the very clothes off of people's backs. They'd clothes, yeah. Think about trillions of these things, okay? Like flying around and like eating your clothes, and like there's also like stories I read where like horses had like leather seats on them or whatever you call saddles on them, and like the locusts were just eating it and like it would be decimated. Wow, like so gross, crazy. Yeah, so they were swarming in numbers. Um, they brought staggering economic ruin to rural communities, and in extreme cases, even death.
SPEAKER_01Oh, from what starvation or something?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. I didn't like find any research about like a man like getting eaten to death by these things, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I don't think that happened.
SPEAKER_00Well, oh okay. A lot of witnesses wrote that swarms looked like a snowstorm at night, and during the day, um, the locusts looked like a great white glistening cloud from their wings, caught the sunshine on them, and made them look like a cloud of white vapor. One pioneer wrote.
SPEAKER_01Ew.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so like that's how many there were. It looked like a snowstorm. That's disgusting. It is disgusting. Like you probably couldn't even breathe in without like swallowing a locust. Like if you were outside.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they would just descend on you and see what they could eat off of your body. Ew.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, most of the crops that they ate included, well, it was pretty much everything, but you'll be surprised. Um, they would eat wheat, corn, melons, tobacco, barley, strawberries, potatoes, beans, and fruit trees. One farmer south of the city had written, or like one of the cities, I didn't really which city, um, had 15 acres of corn eaten by them yesterday in three hours. They mowed it down close to the ground just as if a mowing machine had cut it. Wow. So that's what this farmer said. Yeah. Holy shit. 15 acres of corn eaten three hours. That's insane. And it looked like it had been mowed. Yeah. That's like that's how many there were, which is so nasty and disgusting. Disgusting. Ew. Like it really, that's why I was like, eat later. Or mean eat now and pause. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Yeah. You were like, just don't eat during this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like not pleasant. Um, there were a few items that did not appeal to locusts, um, which was interesting. So, for example, they didn't like peas. They like they um they just didn't eat them, but the swarm still caused utter loss of the crop. So, like, they didn't like eat the peas themselves, like the pro the produce, but they like ate everything else around it, which destroyed it anyway.
SPEAKER_01So they'll eat like a treated leather saddle, but they won't eat a pea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's so strange. I know. That's what I thought. Um, in some cases, words spread fast enough um throughout the plains about the swarms. Um, but usually the swarms would come in so fast, and the farmers had to rush to cover their wells and scramble to save their crops, um, the crops that they could. So, like I was thinking about that, like their wells were like probably open with like, you know, that bucket that they pushed down or whatever. Like, but the swarms are so bad, like your water would be like filled with like gross locusts. Wow. So they would have to like rush to cover their well and then like cover their crops. Um, some farmers covered their gardens with blankets and textiles, but the insects simply chewed through the fabric. So there was like no saving it.
SPEAKER_01And are they what color are they?
SPEAKER_00I good question. I only saw black and white things, and I'll explain why, like black and white photos. I'm assuming they're like, I think I read that they're a greenish color, like greenish brown or something, something like that. I think it's close to like what you know a grasshopper is, but again, I I didn't, yeah. There's only like black and white photos and drawings at this point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And now what like happened in the Bible with locusts? I don't know. Okay, because I don't either. I know I just know they like swarmed and it meant that like God hates all of us and we're assholes.
SPEAKER_00Right. Okay. And I'm sure some of these religious folk in the 1800s were like, I'm going to hell. Yep. Um, yeah. Okay. So uh farmers tried to come up with different plans to defend their land against the locusts. Um, one defense strategy included keeping a barrier of fires around one's land. The more smoke produced, the better uh to deter their approach and descent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the locusts would land on the burning pits in numbers significant enough to snuff all of the fire pits out.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_00That is so messed up. It's so disgusting to me, like being outside in this thing that like this swarm is putting out your fires.
SPEAKER_01They're like, Yeah, let's we're just gonna put it out, and the bottom guys will die, and it's fine because we're in this together.
SPEAKER_00It's so I hate them. I hate them so much. Like, I would I would die if I were like these people.
SPEAKER_01This is when people need like fire hoses, yeah. Of fire, like you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like torches that go for a long way, and like it's all like fire comes out, yeah. Okay. Um this Kansas lady named Lily Marks. Um, they she was a child at the time of the plague. Um and she said, think of it, grasshoppers putting out a fire. I just included that quote, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01So they had to be like 30 deep. Like they just stacked up on top of each other.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, probably fire out. Probably. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Fire is really hot, really hot.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, you're right. The guys below the the guys like under the first like 10 layers, they were like the kamikaze, like yeah, you know, I don't know what it's fucked up to say.
SPEAKER_01They were the tributes, they were like the ones that were sacrificing, right?
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe they didn't have a choice, maybe maybe these asshole locusts were like, you dare, you there, get down.
SPEAKER_01Right, but it's yeah, like how I mean they're they're insects, so they're not like smart. Well, bees aren't really smart in that way, yeah. But they're not bees, they're yeah, that's true. So it's like did they just all kind of descend on the fire because they're stupid and they're like, Oh, look, like something shiny. Yeah, and then just like the bottom layer of them died, and the rest of them were like, Oh, okay, well, like we're still standing and there's no more fire. So let's keep doing what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00You know, that's a really good question. I'm I'm kind of assuming that they might have been attracted to the light, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I don't think they were smart enough to be like, okay, this is the fucking plan. Yeah, and some of you are not gonna see. How do you know? How do you know though? I mean, these things could be wicked smart.
SPEAKER_00They don't know that they can like I think we need to talk to a locust.
SPEAKER_01We need to or do you mean or a scientist who knows about locusts?
SPEAKER_00No, I'd actually like to talk to like a real Where are you gonna find a locust?
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_00All right. Um, okay, so Laura um sorry, Laura Ingells Wilde. What I'm messing this up.
SPEAKER_01Laura Oh my god, the author?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Laura Ingalls Wilder. She wrote a novel called On the Banks of Plum Creek. Is that the one you're you're familiar with?
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, what were her books? I read all of them as a child. Cool. Wait, let me google it. Okay, because this actually like means a lot to me. Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_00Laura Ingalls Wilder. Thank you. You said it correctly. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, the one I'm referring to, I don't know if you read this one, but is on the banks of Plum Creek. That's the one that I know of.
SPEAKER_01So she um yes, like pioneer lady, family, little house on the prairie. She wrote that?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Oh, cool. I love that book.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, I didn't even know she okay. Um, yes, those were her books.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, what's funny is that it the next sentence says, or like part of the sentence, like you know, she wrote this on the banks of Plum Creek, and it was about memories of her family's hardship during the locust plague. So she clearly had knowledge about the pioneer days and like writing Little House in the Prairie. That makes so much sense because I guess her family were like pioneers in the Great Plains, yes, they were, and so she has all these like memories and stuff that she's like writing about.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I'm seeing it right now on the banks of Plum Creek. Yeah, and Little House in the Big Woods, that's another one. Oh, cool. And yes, these books like were very important in my childhood. That's really cool. Yeah. Did you not read these? No. Oh, yeah. You've said in previous episodes that you didn't read.
SPEAKER_00I just like didn't read, but I read now.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so what did she what did she have to say?
SPEAKER_00Um, so yeah, so her family likes lived through this plague. Um, and she writes, this is like a quote from her family member, which is so disgusting. Uh, you could hear the millions of jaws biting and chewing. Oh, she also described a scene of when her family members had come back inside their house after a brief excursion. It says, in quotes, Grasshoppers went into the house with them. Their clothes were full of grasshoppers. Some jumped into the hot stove where Mary was starting supper. Ma covered the food till they had chased and smashed every grasshopper. She swept them up and shoveled them into the stove.
SPEAKER_02Ugh.
SPEAKER_00That would really upset me if I'm like trying to cook and these like locusts are jumping into my stew. I'd be really mad. Yeah, that's terrible. And they're huge. Yeah. Well, the size of a pinky, but yeah, exactly. That's big enough for me.
SPEAKER_01You know, they were really roughing it though in those times. I remember I remember things from the book. Like I remember one part of the book they come across like they're in their little vehicle. They had a vehicle? No, like they're like uh buggy with like the roof over it. The wagon.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Or I almost just said Oregon Trail.
SPEAKER_01No. Yes. It's okay. No, no, I know. So they're they're on their like journey and they stop somewhere, and there's like these Swedish people, like immigrants, and there's this. This is when like children's books were way too mature for little kids in the 90s.
SPEAKER_00I felt like yeah, that was so I was that's why I didn't read. I was like, this is way above. That's why you didn't read.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I was like, okay, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm this is above me.
SPEAKER_01So there's this part where like uh Laura's mom is given these biscuits, and she's like, she this Swedish woman pulled these biscuits like out of her her breasts. What? This woman was storing biscuits like in her bra, like her bare boobs. And her and Laura's mom was like, Thank you so much. And then when the Swedish woman like walked away, she was like, We can't eat these because like you know, like diphtheria was going around and like other diseases. She was like, I couldn't bear to stomach them. We've fed them to the chickens, and it was like he was just talking about like you know, just this.
SPEAKER_00I I just remember reading it when I was little, and I was like, that's like weird, like that's so weird, and also like they had so much fabric on them at that time. Like, couldn't they just like make pockets and like put the biscuits in there?
SPEAKER_01The this this woman made biscuits, shoved them up against her bare breasts, and was handing them out like tic-tacks, apparently. Hey, this is what book is this called? It's Little House on the Prairie, it's one of the books, or like Little Big House on the Prairie or whatever. It's this okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I bet that actually happened.
SPEAKER_01If she's like telling her family stories, yeah, yeah, and they fed them to the chickens.
SPEAKER_00Well, good. I'm sure those chickens loved that.
SPEAKER_01I think that I hope the chicken survived.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, probably not. Anyway. Um, okay, so grasshoppers everywhere, disgusting. Um, other research I did said uh yeah, other research I did said that people could hear constant noises of the locusts slamming into the house. Ugh. So, like that was like frequent, like what I ran into. Like the noise was like like, you know, constant, like even more than that. Like kind of like when you hear a fly in your light, like flying around a light and hitting it. Imagine times that by like a trillion locusts.
SPEAKER_01When I lived in Honduras one night, I was just like sitting in my little like bungalow, and I it sounded like someone knocked on the door with a metal ring.
SPEAKER_00Ew.
SPEAKER_01And I opened, I was like, who the fuck is here? I opened the door and it was this bug. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Was it like a big beetle?
SPEAKER_01It was this huge bug, I don't even know what it was, but it was it literally sounded like a dude with like a metal ring was like cluck clock clock cluck on my door.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Imagine that. Like, I mean, I'm sure these these locusts were a little bit smaller than that bug that you saw.
SPEAKER_01But it's just it's that sound. It's like sound, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That would like actually make me go insane, like hearing that outside my house. That's scary. Yeah. Okay, so uh like going back to like how these other farmers were like, okay, you know, the fire pits didn't work. So here's some other things that um they tried. So other farmers tried shotgun blasts, which I was like, okay, buddy, like like I know that shotguns like have a bunch of bullets when you know you pull the trigger, but like that's only gonna kill like a few.
SPEAKER_01How are you gonna take out bugs with a shotgun?
SPEAKER_00That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but I think they were desperate. So they tried shotgun blasts. Um, they tried stomping, which clear, I mean, we'd be stomping all day, like it would look like a hoe down. Um, this is the stupid one hitting the insects with a stick. I'm like, good for you. Like you're gonna get like one at a time. But I mean, they were so like desperate. They didn't have anything and like they were just outnumbered. Um there was a device called the hopper dozer um that they created, like people created. Um, and it was a horse-drawn tool that trawled the fields uh using a steel plate covered in sticky coal tar to scoop and trap locusts from the ground. So that's pretty clever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What was it called?
SPEAKER_00Uh hopperdozer. Hopperdozer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I guess like that's why I was like confused about I think they do come from the ground because this said it traps locusts. From the ground. So I feel like a lot of them were based, like hatching and stuff like came from the ground. I'm just not sure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, there was an entomologist, which I had to look up, and it's an expert in zoology concerned with insects. Um, his name was Charles Valentine Riley. Um, and he suggested that locusts, when boiled and afterwards stewed with a few vegetables, a little bit of butter, pepper, salt, vinegar, made an excellent fricassi. What's a frikassi? I looked that up too. A dish of stewed and fried pieces of meat served in a thick white sauce. That's just got now. So he was thinking maybe people should start embracing this and start cooking them and eat them. Right. Like as a food source, which you know, back in the day makes sense, but like, and I wrote, ew, in capital letters in my notes.
SPEAKER_01Also, like, what would you eat?
SPEAKER_00The entire bug or like the meat. I think you could, I think, you know, I think it's probably like the entire bug, like pick up the wings. I mean, think about how people like eat ants and bugs now, like in different countries, like the protein and stuff. Yeah, I know, but you can count me out of all of that. I literally, I my family knows this, and any of my close friends. I if I had to be like on an island and there were only bugs to eat, I literally would die. I wouldn't yeah, I wouldn't do it.
SPEAKER_01Isn't there like a saved by the bell episode where they're eating bugs and chocolate?
SPEAKER_00I don't know, but that's really funny that you said that because Screech just died yesterday. No, so sad. Anyways, but I don't I don't know that episode.
SPEAKER_01I just remember like they were eating something and someone was like, That's the thorax, ew. Which is like the body of a bug, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Oh god. Gross. Okay, yeah, gross. Um, okay, so also locusts that were tired. Um, like they said retired locusts, which I feel like, you know, locusts just like going retired, yeah. Like in the literature I was reading or whatever, but I just wrote locusts that were tired instead of retired. Like you know how you retired about those are two different things. You it's very different to be retired or tired. What if you're retiring and you're sleepy? Like I'm gonna retire for the night.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Well, that's what I think this is. But nobody is retired if they're sleepy. They're retiring for the night. Like if you're tired, you're no longer working. It doesn't have to do with like how alert you are.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, so okay, locusts that were basically retiring for the night. How about that?
SPEAKER_01Okay, they're not retired from like their locust. You made it seem like they like no they were like hanging up their like locust wings, and they're like, We're not doing this anymore. We're gonna go like to the locusts.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna go collect um whatever it's called.
SPEAKER_01Social security. Yeah, we're gonna go, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, so locusts that were like just done for the day, um they would huddle on train tracks for rest and for warmth. Um, the cool morning, yeah, the cool morning air would make them really sluggish, and a lot of them were squished by the horde under the wheels of passing trains. They gathered so numerously, noted a government report that the oil from the crushed bodies reduced the traction so um the train would actually stop, especially if it had to go uphill. Like, isn't that so disgusting? So that's how many there were, and like it would stop trains.
SPEAKER_01That is revolting.
unknownGross.
SPEAKER_01And I wonder why they decided to land on the the like metal tracks.
SPEAKER_00I I was thinking like like friction from the train, maybe it was heated, like the train going back and forth, like the oh, that's what I was thinking. That's interesting, or like the sun reflecting on it all day. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, girl. Um, okay. Um the worst swarm recorded in history was called Albert's Swarm, um, which was a huge concentration of the Rocky Mountain locusts in 1875. So the following year, the worst storm was uh swarm was ever recorded in history. Um it was named after Albert Child, uh, who was a physician who calculated the size of the swarm. Get this. It was 198,000 square miles, the swarm. What? And he did this by multiplying the swarm's estimated speed with the time it took from it to move through southern Nebraska. Um, the estimate of locusts in the swarm was 12.5 trillion, weighing 27.5 million tons, which is the greatest concentration of animals ever speculated, um, ever speculatively guessed, according to the Guinness World Book of Records.
SPEAKER_01In the world?
SPEAKER_00In the world. Oh my god. 27.5 million tons if you put all the bugs together in this swarm. Okay. Um, okay. So that happened in 1875. This was like, you know, again, like I kind of explained, the locusts were always a pest, but this was like by far the worst couple years um of this infestation. Um, eventually, so they were like, we gotta do something to like protect these people. Um, eventually in 1877, Congress established the US Entomological Commission for the purpose of confronting this ongoing pest. Uh, two years prior, it had allocated 30,000 to supply seed to devastating or to devastated areas. So the Congress was trying to help and like give money and seeds to these farmers that had lost everything. Um, in Missouri, the government required the able-bodied uh to dedicate one or two days per week plowing and killing locust eggs and larva.
SPEAKER_01Ugh, larva.
SPEAKER_00I hate that word. I know me too. Um, so that was going on in Missouri as part of like this act to help. Um, in Minnesota, Nicolette County paid its citizens $25,053 for delivering uh $25,053 bushels of slaughtered locusts, which is a ton of money back then. That's so gross. That's so much money, and like that's how but you'd have to like, you know, basically you'd get a dollar for every locust you like killed. Right. Yeah. Um, okay. Unfortunately, during 1874 to 1875, not everyone survived. Um, a contemporary report in the St. Louis, sorry, Saint Louis, wait, St. Saint St. Louis, St. Louis, right? Okay, sorry. I had a moment. Um St. Louis Louis Republican reads. Um, we have seen within the past week families which had not had a meal of uh victuals in their house. Meal of victuals in their house. I think that's like an old term. Yeah, I've never heard that. Um families that had nothing to eat save what their neighbors gave them and what game could be caught in a trap. Um so like they're catching like whatever they can and like squirrels or whatever to eat um since last fall. Um, in one case, a family of six died within six days of each other from the want of food to keep body and soul together. From present indications, the future four months will make many graves marked with a simple piece of wood with the subscription starve to death painted on it. So that was like from the St. Louis, St. Louis Republican, um, which was like wow writing. Um, so really sad. Um, no other year proved as severe uh or renuous um as that of 1874 to 1875. Um the locust overall caught in this time frame uh caused 20 million dollars in crop damage, which again is like this is 1870s, so like that's so much money and so much devastation. Um over the next few years, the locust population was dying down, and the last recorded sighting of the live specimen was in 1902 in southern Canada. Um because the creature was not expected to become, so it became extinct, but it was not expected to become extinct. Um, there are very few samples uh that were ever collected of the Rocky Mountain grasshopper. Um the the um collection that they that we do have in this day and age are um grasshoppers uh that were found in glaciers in Montana. Um so no one knows exactly why they went extinct so quickly, um, but there are a few theories. Um one was the ecology of the locust was somehow linked to the great hands of bison. Uh sorry, the great herd, the great herds of bison.
SPEAKER_01I was like at the hands of bison.
SPEAKER_00Um so they were related to the herds of bison and that the extermination was caused by the increased range of buffalo. Um, these two major and competing grazers had coexisted on the plains for thousands of years. So the idea was advanced that bison somehow altered the ecology of the grasslands to favor reproduction and survival of the locusts. Um, so that was kind of like a theory that didn't go over too well, but it could make sense. Like, you know, bison did repopulate pretty quickly after the Civil War and um could have like stomped on their um nests in the ground or whatever. Um another theory was that the plant uh sorry, that the planting of alfalfa throughout the locust breeding area in the later part of the 19th century could have played a role in the extinct uh in the insects, insects' extinction. Um, alfalfa, which is pal uh palatable to grasshoppers, was shown in laboratory studies to be deteriorous to the growth of the insects' immature stage.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. Alfalfa is pretty disgusting. Uh what it's like a grain, right? It's like people put like alfalfa sprouts on a sandwich.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I like those, I think. Yeah, I like those. Good for I eat like a lot of the brow broccoli sprouts. Not into it. You're not into it? No. Um, yeah, I I I don't mind those. Um, but anyway, yeah, so that could have had a um an effect on the Rocky Mountain um locust extinction. Um, another theory was that the cattle grazing and homesteaders' cultivation of restricted uh of a restricted region of the plains, the permanent breeding grounds of the insect um during a population recession of the locust in the 1880s may have irreversibly, irreversibly, why can't I talk today? Um disrupted locust reproduction. Um others had shown that grasshopper eggs fail to hatch if the soil they are deposited in is distributed by plowing or by other means. So, yes, they are deposited in the soil. I just answered our question. Yeah, but I forgot I had written down. And that is the end.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so what has happened since then? Like nothing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like they're gone, like they're extinct, like no one's seen one since 1902.
SPEAKER_01So in the beginning of the episode, I was like, oh, they like come out and hatch every whatever amount of years. And I I was thinking of cicadas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was too when I first started this, and like in I don't know if I don't know if Maine has this or like the north. I'm sure I'm assuming they do, but I know in Texas they like have that thing where they shed their skin and they're like sticky and they attach to your the trees, and my sisters and I used to like put them on each other, like their skin. Did you ever do that?
SPEAKER_01No, I because I don't remember there ever being cicadas here in Vermont. But um they're really loud, aren't they?
SPEAKER_00They're so loud, and they like they like scream and they chase, they like fly and like knock into things. And I've been chased by one before. It's terribly gone. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I feel like my like cicada knowledge as like a girl, also like the movie Virg the Virgin Suicides. You've never seen The Virgin Suicides? No, with Kirsten Dunst.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't love her.
SPEAKER_01Sophia Coppola directed it, wrote it.
SPEAKER_00I've heard of it, I just never saw it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah. Well, there's a cicada like outbreak at the end of the film, and the film is about these five sisters that all kill themselves. Oh, that's terrifying and sad. But then I feel like recently there was a cicada outbreak, like, and they came, they come out of the ground. Yeah, was there I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I think I know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_01It has something to do with like the moon.
unknownYeah. I don't fucking know.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, and like I don't know how recent this was, but in my research also, I I guess there have been other like swarms in Africa, but I don't know if it was locusts or like cicadas or like like an out like a plague like this, but not I don't know if there's been like anything in the United States like this to this level. Um, but yeah, no, I've I have heard of those those like events happening, and I feel like there was something recent about it, I just don't remember what it was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Creepy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that's that's some history for you, and I'm really glad I wasn't there for it.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think whenever there are these like massive uh insect hatchings or like you know, plague-like circumstances, like a few years ago in Maine, the brown tail moth. Oh god, that was horrible, and I was attacked. You got it, yeah. And that it was the worst. I mean, I have had worse experiences with like bug bites, yeah, because of places that I've lived, but like this was horrifying, it was horrible.
SPEAKER_00I had like I feel like I blame that on myself, but it's just like because you got it like when you came over to the island, yeah. I was my summer house or whatever. And my mom gets it all the time, and like I have never gotten it. I don't think I'm allergic to it.
SPEAKER_01That year was bad, yeah. I had like a big ha like I hate the word hatch.
SPEAKER_00Ew, I don't either. I don't think that it yeah, it's disgusting. Um, unless it's like turtles hatching, that's cute. Well, that's different, yeah. Or like little chickens, or like chickens or dinosaurs, yeah. So I guess we don't really hate that word, just like in the terms of it.
SPEAKER_01It still makes me feel it still reminds me of like that word hatch. It's like lice or something.
SPEAKER_00Ew, disgusting. Um, yeah, you had it really bad. And um, basically, for all of you who don't know, the brown tail moth, like it's basically like releases these like I don't know, spores or hairs, no hairs in the air. Yeah, and literally they touch your skin and you break out into this like rash and it's terrible.
SPEAKER_01I had like lumps and welts and like an itchy rash all over my legs with like scabby open source, yeah.
SPEAKER_00For like a month, right?
SPEAKER_01It was the one months, it was horrifying.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, like I don't think I'm allergic to it because a lot of people in my family, like who have been around, have gotten it, and I've never I don't I'm also not really allergic to poison ivy. I've rolled in it before and never had it in my life.
SPEAKER_01Really?
SPEAKER_00So maybe I'm just like immune from those two things. I'm not sure, but um, yeah, it's awful. And we did have an outbreak. It it was like all over the news, and I remember like we had at our apartment um outside there were like tons around the light, and the landlord had to come and like spray. It was so bad. Yeah, you can actually get into your like I read it could get into your like your your lungs and stuff, which could be really dangerous, like the hairs. It's fucked up, yeah. But yeah, I hope all of you enjoyed that. And uh let's, you know, we all think that 2020 is pretty bad. And um, I would like to say that it's uh better than having a trillion locusts like eat all of our food and our clothes and our clothes and fly into our heads when we walk outside.
SPEAKER_01I would be more pissed if they ate my clothes.
SPEAKER_00Really? Yeah, you'd be more pissed than if they ate your food.
SPEAKER_01If they ate my crops, I'd be like, whatever, I'll just go to like the store again. But if they ate my clothes, I'd be like, fuck. Yeah, but if it you pieces of shit.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, but like if they ate all the crops, like you wouldn't even have a store to go to.
SPEAKER_01I'm talking about like now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but like that would that would still affect like the food source we have now. Kind of. I mean, we have surprises. You're like, I'm just worried about yeah, my I have a freezer. Oh yeah. With food. Yeah, I mean, that would be I'd come over to your house, I guess. I have a couple things in the freezer, but yeah, so we have it pretty good these days, even though things have been, you know, grim. I'd like to look at the bright side of that.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, we didn't have locusts.
SPEAKER_00We didn't have locusts, we didn't have to catch squirrels in a trap just to eat for tonight. I'm really thankful for that. So yeah. Yeah, well, thank you for listening. Yes, thank you. Um, by the way, for all of you listeners, um we have recently just joined Clubhouse, which is really exciting. It's this new platform, it's not even public yet. Um, but we got invited by a special friend of mine. Thank you out there. Um, and Clubhouse is this new kind of social platform um where you know Vanessa and I potentially can get on and do a live podcast. And anyone who's a part of the Clubhouse network, um, you know, can kind of uh ask to, you know, jump in and um ask a question or be a part of the conversation. So we're exploring more of that and we'll let you know if we decide to do uh a live episode in the future. So just wanted to throw that idea out there for everybody.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because we do want to do live episodes and we want it to be interactive. Um, so this clubhouse platform potentially allows for that. So we're yeah, we're exploring that and figuring that out. Because we want you to be a part of it. Yeah. We want to hear your locust survival stories.
SPEAKER_00Oh, gross. Even if it's like one locust attacked you, we want to know. Yeah. Tell us. And also, still, you know, throwing this out there, if you guys have any incredible survivor stories of anything Mother Earth related, um, please write us at killer earthpodcast at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you and um read your story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Absolutely. All right, I think that's all I got. That's all I got. Well, you got me, friend. All right, well, until next time.
SPEAKER_00Goodbye.
SPEAKER_01Goodbye.
SPEAKER_02Bye toggles and I hate them.