ELKO INVADED BY MILLIONS OF CANNIBAL MORMONS

 I WON'T BE ABLE TO POST TOMORROW, SO THE FOLLOWING IS FOR FRIDAY, AND IS MY SECOND BLOG TODAY.  

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Okay, maybe my effort today will be somewhat frivolous, but certainly not so for Elko residents, as they were inconvenienced by an invasion of Mormons last week.  More specifically, the headline from the Daily Mail said:

Nevada town is hit by 'biblical' invasion of cannibal MORMON CRICKETS, leaving roads dangerously-slick after millions of the crop-devouring pests were squashed by cars

Elko of Nevada has a population of more than 20,000, and straddles the Humboldt River.  Hunter S. Thompson quipped that in Elko, "The federal government owns 90% of this land, and most of it is useless for anything except weapons testing and poison-gas experiments,"^[18]

Otherwise, Elko is known for their annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in January and National Basque Festival next month, humorously referred to as the Basquo Fiasco.  It is also home to legal prostitution.  If you're shocked, Nevada is the only state doing so, and 10 of 17 counties are similarly endowed.

But about those cannibalistic Mormon crickets, when some of them get on a road and are squashed by cars, their buddies come out to eat their friends.  And they too get overrun, making for a messy road when you have millions of them in this condition.  Combine this with some rain, and the situation becomes downright dangerous.  

Why Mormon crickets?  Legend has it that these katydids (not really crickets) devastated crops planted by Mormon settlers who moved to Utah.  Remember the story of praying for relief, and seagulls?  Such a thing did occur in 1848, and the California Gull is now the state bird of Utah.  While the Miracle of the Crickets is fact, there is evidence that prehistoric people of this area consumed sun-dried crickets and grasshoppers as a primary food source.  

This practice is returning in Utah.  There is something called Chapul bars with around 40 crickets in each.  Not whole ones.  They are slow-roasted and ground into a powder.  These gourmet bars come in three flavors and are said to be loaded with B-12, iron and Omega 3, while low in fat and cholesterol.

Each spring, or summer, these insects will mate and lay a new generation of eggs in the soil.  While some will hatch the following year, some will lay dormant for up to 11 years.  They tend to hatch when a drought happens, and they come up all at once.  While this appearance is a pain, there was a more impressive arrival in the early 2000s.  Elko did not  subsenquently see much for a decade or so until a mild invasion in 2019.  Then again now, covering maybe a thousand acres. These mormons appear to be a red wave, and will be around until at least August.  Where do they go?  They mate and die.

The Journal of Insects as Food and Feed (2022; 8(1)) speculates that 2 billion people today regularly harvest and eat insects.  Comes from a Food and Agriculture Organization study of 245 countries and territories.  10% in Latin America/Africa and 30% in Asia.  There, too, is insect farming.  I've walked around street stalls in Thailand and Singapore and bravely did some tasting.  Silkworms are popular in Singapore and Thailand serves locusts, palm weevils, bamboo caterpillars, crickets, red ants, giant water bugs and, of course, silkworms.  Oh, there are health benefits:

These include antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-collagenase, elastase-inhibitory, α-glucosidase-inhibitory, pancreatic lipase-inhibitory, antidiabetic/insulin-like/insulin-like peptide (ApILP), antidiabetic, anti-aging, and immune-enhancing properties.

Tropical Storm Brett will probably not become a hurricane:

But right behind is Cindy:

So early and so often because this part of the Atlantic/Caribbean is abnormally warm:

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