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Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL
Newspaper Page Text
THE GRASSHOPPER ARMIES OVER WESTERN COUNTRY EATING EVERY GREEN THING Dodge City, Kan., July 15. While Kansas and the Southwest have been kiln-dried and baked in weeks of in tolerable heat, little Mr. Grasshopper has been having the time of his glad young life. He should worry about the heat! This semi-arid country is swarm ing with hoppers, from Great Bend west to the foothills of the Rockies, from "No Man's Land" down through Oklahoma, the Panhandle and New Mexico. A cold spell a month ago kept the pest dormant and saved the wheat. Then followed the hot, dry spell that hatches out 90 per cent of the eggs laid in the ground last fall by millions of lady hoppers. The ground became alive with gnat-like insects the baby hoppers foraging for food and growing rapidly. Soon armies were on the move, marching through fields of late wheat, young corn, kafir and milo. As their wings grew they spread fast er and attacked the orchards. Now, with grass and weeds eaten up or killed by the drouth, they are a grow ing' menace to all crops. Today I walked into the country to the east of this old "Cowboy Cap ital." At every step my foot started a little cloud of rasping wings and legs, yellow, brown, black and green. I saw apple trees stripped of every leaf, green peaches gnawed till bare stones alone clung to the boughs, corn leaves devoured and juicy stalks punctured till they fell, alfalfa leveled to the ground, fence posts plastered with green hoppers enjoying their siesta. Mr. Hopper is well equipped for his eating job. He has several hun dred eyes to see food with, a pair of jaws that can chew anything, and the appetite of a hired hand. Fred Hahn, a farmer near here, tells me he has to hide the pitchforks to keep the hoppers from biting holes in the handles. Deacon Buckthorn, who lives south of the river, near Syracuse, declares he saw one old hopper that had met with an accident and lost all his body except the head, chewing Grasshoppers try to get nourish ment out of a fence post. away like mad on a young maize plant. The destruqtion thus far is less a real calamity than a warning. The farmers fear the loss of their forage and fruit crops and a worse plague next year. And for the first time Kansas farm ers are banding together to fight the pest scientifically. The commission ers of Ford County have announced a hopper-killing bee. The county furnishes the "dope" free and the