A Plague of Locusts

Swarms invade our mealie fields

            From Wikipedia   “Locust is the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae.   These are species that can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory.   They form bands as nymphs and swarms as adults—both of which can travel great distances, rapidly stripping fields and greatly damaging crops.”   Locusts are an edible insect and are considered a delicacy in some countries and in history.

Locusts backen the sky

            One year a huge swarm of locusts arrived and landed in our mealie fields and started eating the plants immediately.   My dad tried everything in his power to drive them off.   We banged on empty tins in the lands; he burnt the grass growing around the field hoping that the smoke would drive them away.   That night they climbed on the barbed wire fence and hung onto it until it looked like a thick rope around the lands,   Black storks, also known as locust birds, and many other insect eating birds followed them and had a feast.   The black people caught and roasted them and filled grain bags of live insects which they tied up and placed in the dam with big stones on top to keep them under water.



Protien for weeks

            By now our mealie crop as well as that of all our neighbours, was gone and only bits and pieces of the plants were left.   I do not know what made the swarm take off, but one morning when the sun was shining nice and bright and had warmed them, they started flying not to be seen again.   When the black people decided to retrieve their bags with drowned insects from the dam, they untied them and emptied the dead locusts on the ground to dry (a type of biltong).  

They would have plenty of protein for quite some time, but when the sun started warming the locusts, they all came alive again and took off.   This I was told happened after the bags of insects had been under the water for about a week.   The lands had to be replanted and the farmers started ploughing and planting again.

            Locusts first became famous in the book of Exodus as the eighth of the ten plagues of Egypt when Moses, with God’s help, was trying to release the Israelites from slavery.   Exodus 10:3-13 “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?    Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow.    They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen.    They will devour what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields.   They will fill your houses and those of all your officials and all the Egyptians—something neither your fathers nor your forefathers have ever seen from the day they settled in this land till now”.   “God then had Moses stretch his staff over Egypt, and a wind picked up from the east.   The wind continued until the following day, when it brought a locust swarm.   The swarm covered the sky, casting a shadow over Egypt.   It consumed all the remaining Egyptian crops, leaving no tree or plant standing.   Pharaoh again asked Moses to remove this plague and promised to allow all the Israelites to worship God in the desert.   As promised, God sent a wind that blew the locusts into the Red Sea.   However, he also hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not allow the Israelites to leave”.

                South Africa has been relieved of this plague by spraying the insects from aeroplanes while they are still in the nymph stage of development and their appearance in great numbers is seldom heard about now.

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