Parts of Nevada and Idaho are currently playing host to an unwelcome visitor, the Mormon cricket.
These flightless insects, which are actually katydids that look like oversized grasshoppers, have descended on buildings, sidewalks, and roadways in such numbers that special cleanup crews have been called into action.
In Nevada's Elko region, the infestation has been particularly intense, prompting the state's Transportation Department to caution drivers about potentially slick conditions due to crushed crickets on the roads. Also, when squashed, the creepy crawlies emit an unpleasant odor.
"This has literally been the worst day of my life. Well, maybe not the worst, but it's definitely, by far the most disgusting," Colette Reynolds said in a viral TikTok video, showing Mormon crickets gathered all around her home — on the pavement, the walls, and in the grass.
"I'm legitimately petrified to go back inside because they're there and they jump on you," she said, calling the bug invasion "absolutely foul."
In a followup video, a man uses a leaf blower to clear bugs away from the front door while he retrieves packages.
"Oh thank god my hero is here," she says. "He looks disgusted and defeated just like I do."
In Elko, where Reynolds lives, the town is pitching in to keep the cricket invasion under control. The Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital has had to utilize leaf blowers, brooms, and even a tractor equipped with a snowplow to keep pathways clear for patients.
"Just to get patients into the hospital, we had people out there with leaf blowers, with brooms," Steve Burrows, the hospital's director of community relations, told KSL-TV. "At one point, we even did have a tractor with a snowplow on it just to try to push the piles of crickets and keep them moving on their way."
At the Shilo Inns hotel in Elko, staffers tried using a mixture of bleach, dish soap, hot water and vinegar as well as a pressure washer to ward off the invading insects, according to The New York Times.
One commenter quipped, "Mormon crickets don't drink and must give up 10% of their earnings."
