The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 431 - Year of the Locust

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the locusts of 1874SourcesTour DatesRedbubble Merch

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bilingual American history podcast where each week I hat wearer, drinker of ice tea, lover of big fluffy labradoodles, Dave Anthony, reach a story from American history to his friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. Is that true? Yep. You know that. We've covered this. Hmm. Really? Yep. You know all those times when you when I like text you when we're in a hotel if you remember what hotels are and I'm like hey man you want to get a bite to eat you go I don't know I can't I don't have time to go get a bite to eat because I'm not just some fucking asshole who shows up. Yeah so that's how that's how you know.

Well first of all I don't say fucking. Okay. You know what I mean? No. I think I just say I'm not some asshole that just shows up. No you swear. What are you talking about? What a weird. I never I don't use the F-curse. You just did in referencing what I said you just said it. I did in the in the context of a quote. You love your little quote loopholes don't you? You love your little quote loopholes. Tell me whatever you want when you've got the cloak of invisibility on. You got the quote cloak. How dare you. You know that my religion does not allow me to drop F-bombs. What are you talking about? What's your problem? I'm a Jehovah's Witness.

Did you not know that? I hope this I hope that happened over quarantine. And that's why I didn't celebrate Memorial Day. Ah right you don't celebrate holidays. That's right. Except for maybe Christmas but you don't give gifts. I don't give gifts on Christmas I just walk around telling everybody that not many of us are gonna make it to heaven like 30 or something and the rest everybody else is fucked and you know why because you didn't believe hard enough. Well to be honest any heaven that lets in Jehovah's Witnesses I don't want to hang out in so. That is a problem. Look we're not great. No. Oh god now we're gonna lose

all about Jehovah Witness audience. And called it quote is Jampap. Jampap? I'm the fucking hippo guy. Dave okay. My name's Gary. My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna become a tiggly pod, Gary. Okay. This is like an ad on a five part coefficient. It's my room to play. Now hit him with the puppy. You both present sick arguments. Don't sleep till hippo. That's like tell hippo. Actually partner. Hi Gary. No. Nice to see you darling. My friend. Ronda. Ronda in the car. Girl, this our first standing at Home episode. Yeah. Do you like how I keep moving? Psychotic. That's what happens when you

have had a child. What? For dinner? When you care? No. Well, I've had one for dinner, but the one I own, Finn. Makes you pace? When they're babies, you hold them and you rock. He's a grown-up now and he's not in your arms, so you can stop rocking. I know, but you never, as an adult, you never really stop rocking. Looks like you're on a swing. Well, our president moves a lot when he tries to stand still. Great emulator. Yeah, smart. Dave, I should point out that I'm on the road in my bedroom every Thursday night on Instagram, Instagram Live. You can go to atrenaldsgarith and you can watch me riff on subjects that are emailed to garriffslive at gmail.com and you can send those and it's a party. And I have a

martini. And you have a martini. Also, comedy clubs are opening up all over America if you want to go somewhere and catch something and die. Now's the time to watch content online in a robe. Also, you can go to my YouTube, which is backslash garrithrenaldstv. If you're looking for more. Hey, do you remember in the history, when there was a plague and every country on earth acted like there was a plague except for one who just went out and partied? 1862. I did a little something there. I was just for you. It's hot. The Homestead Act was passed by Congress. President Lincoln said it was, quote, to elevate the condition of men to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race

of life. Well, that sounds like most bills they pass. They sound positive. What's the nuts and bolts, Dave? Obviously, you bring it up for a reason. Well, it was to get people to move out west. Of course, besides giving everyone else a chance and an unfettered start, it also increased the strength of the US by taking over Western lands from people who had lived there for centuries. Sure. Yeah. Well, but he passed an act, so they need to respect the government that just got there. That's right. Also, corporations took massive advantage of this. But the Homestead Act did give incentive to Americans to move and settle into Western territory. For just a filing fee of $18 and a buck 25 per acre, you could have your own land. It's pretty good. That's not a

bad deal, right? Yeah. I'll take it. You also had to live on the land for five years and build a house on it. So a lot of people had it out west. Okay. Because now you got a shot. You have to build a house on it. Yeah, you had to build a boat. Because you got to, or else you could just buy land and act like you're living there, but you weren't. Yeah, for sure. Not that anyone in America would ever not follow the rules. Same page. So the Civil War ended in 1865. Do you know what the Civil War? Yeah, I do. And I don't believe it ended. No, you're thinking of the wave two. Oh, right. Right. The second wave. So more people headed west after the Civil War ended, including many blacks who could buy land under the Homestead Act. Right. About time. Even more

people came with the first continental railroad being completed. So it's just a time when a lot of people are heading out. Can you imagine if you had it, if you were like heading out on foot, and by the time that it took you to get from wherever you were on foot to California or wagon, you just see a train going by? Wait, what? What? Oh, fuck. No. Big job. Come on. That's like when you look for parking forever. And then you settle on a shitty parking spot. And then as you're walking to the destination you're going to, you see one right in front, you're like, if I just had not run around like a lunatic and waited patiently. That's the story of Los Angeles right there. So it wasn't that great. It wasn't what they were always sold, you know. It was a

lot tougher life. There were droughts. They'd go to their new land and had a bad soil and they couldn't farm it. And then also locusts. Sure. Well, there you go. Just eat those. You like those? He knows. Jesuit missionaries had been writing about locusts in California since 1722. Whoa. Are you taking this in a locust direction? Locusts were a regular problem for farms in the east. Swarms hit Maine in 1743 and 1756, Vermont in 1797. In the west there were reported swarms in 1828, 1838, 1846, 1855, Minnesota in 1856, and 1857 and 1865. Nebraska had seven swarms over 17 years starting in 1850. When you say swarm, a swarm, I mean a swarm is just like a cloud of locusts. A cloud of locusts. And just coming down. And I know they eat like they'll eat crops and stuff

like that, but they will attack the humans. You'll see. Oh, God. Okay. Did they not know about the Homestead Act? In Texas in 1853, the Reverend R. M. White described seeing an approaching reddish dark cloud as it rose on the horizon. Honey, is it supposed to red, right? Is it going to locust tonight? When the swarm was close, he could hear their wings, which sounded like a heavy wind. It sounds like a heavy wind. At first, a few descended, and then they came and mass soon locusts were inches deep on the ground. The sun was completely darkened by those that were in the air, and they started eating. Three days later, all the vegetation was gone. The area, quote, looked as if a fire had swept over it. But can we for a second look at how satisfied the locusts must have

been? Oh my God, so full kicking it. They look like the they look like the people in Wally on the spaceship. Just all fat and giggly. Like, uh, I could not eat another turnip. Holy shit, America's awesome. Now if we build a house, we own the land locusts. So some farmers noticed the greater prairie chicken would eat a lot of locusts and help control them. Okay. And so in Texas, farmers asked for the birds to be protected by the state from February to September every year to help fight the locusts, but no one listened to the farmers. Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah. And the birds were not protected till much later. Many farmers would wait until the locusts had passed through before replanting or just planting their crops. So there's no government that's helping. There's no like

expert department of agriculture that can help you with everyone's just kind of on their own. They're learning from a swarm committee. There's no swarm committee. There's no swarm department. There's no local organization. And by the same token, there's probably no one there stupid enough yet to pitch like the version that we would definitely hear in other times. Like it's too early for the like where you could just be like, we need to bomb the locusts. That's right. Okay. That'll come. Okay, good. So in America, these are rocky mountain locusts. Okay. They're one and a quarter to one and a half inches big. Okay. Now locusts are actually grasshoppers. Okay. Yeah, they can buy that grasshoppers are usually solitary creatures. They don't hang out with other grasshoppers. They

just cruise around alone. But when their population gets really dense, they lay eggs in the soil, and then hatch months later. And because there are so many, they change their color changes to red. And then their behavior changes. So they are grasshoppers. They're just like evil grasshoppers. Yes, evil grasshoppers. So they turn in a group setting, they turn gray, they turn into a social group as opposed to when they're solitary. So it's like when a dude joins a frat. Yeah, it's probably yeah, it's like when you're like in the 50s, when your teenager was becoming a greaser, you were just like, I don't like you wearing that red, those red wings, Danny. All the guys are weird. I want you to be a grasshopper and your father's a grasshopper and you're

looking like you've got locust body, Danny. Oh, that's weird, because I want to kick the shit out of some soshes. Oh, oh, oh, Danny. Danny, don't go joining the locust swarm. You're supposed to late, ma. Oh, Danny, no. And we're watching TV. Oh, no. Oh, and listening to rock and roll. Oh, no. That's what I feared. And do an anal. You probably shouldn't tell your mother all this stuff. Just I understand the general premise, which was invented in 1952. What's going on? I just anal. Me and some of the boys down at the mechanic shop invented it. Well, first of all, you didn't invent it. Your father did. That's how he got me to do it. He told me it came up with a new way. All right. No, no, no, you've opened the conversation up to some real

honesty. And I feel like there's some vulnerability. And maybe a mother and a son can connect over this because, you know, you're going off. But no, your father convinced me. And I'm pretty sure that it had never been done before. Well, he said we could maybe get a Nobel Prize. And then he said every year on his birthday, we'd do it until we got a Nobel Prize. So. All right, look, I don't have to be a greaser. But oh, that's great. Stay home. We can just stop talking about that. Come on, it's your dad's birthday tonight. Well, sit around. No, we won't. Oh, okay. So their behavior changes. They swarm away from where they come out of the ground because they eat everything there. So why would they bother staying and then? That's right. And they're

basically when they change, they just become like ravenous eaters. Well, it's quite a transformation. Yeah, yeah. So they're basically born to eat and breed and eat and breed. And then their eggs produce more swarming generations and so on. So it just starts a pattern, right? Yeah. By the way, that's also the mantra of the Midwest. Yeah, the same thing. This is I'm basically just described in Iowa. Farmers would plow the eggs in December and January because exposure kill. We're hoping for a good crop of locusts this year. We're tilling the soil open. You've got to really pay attention if you want to grow a killer batch. Mother, these eggs are right. That's right, son. Now, come on, we're going to make tiny omelets. So exposure would kill them. So they try to plow

the ground, they would burn the prairie, and they put straw in their fields to burn. It's amazing the power of insects. Yeah. Others poison them. But when the swarm was large, it was impossible to kill all the eggs. Okay. So then you just move. Now, the Rocky Mountain locust was named in a published report in 1866 by B.D. Walsh. Calipitinus spritus is the Latin name. Spritus is Latin for it despised. That's not nice. Yeah. Don't let the locust sign. No, it's not nice, but they're dicks. Locust bred in sandy areas, and they did very well when it was hot and dry. So the thing to get a swarm is heavy rain followed by serious heat. Yeah, right. Okay. That seems to be the deal with a lot of like the worst bugs. That's how I got gonorrhea. Oh, God. At least, I think.

The gonorrhea sound like what happens when your diarrhea goes away. Okay, go ahead. Now you can go. How's your diarrhea? More like gonorrhea. I just see Will Anderson shaking his head. In a nodding fashion. People also named the locust the hateful migratory locust, the hateful grasshopper, the hopping devil, the harbinger of evil, the migratory marauder, pestilential destroyer, the greatest of terrors, and the Kansas grasshopper. They all sound like boxer names. They do. Oh, my God. I would be called the Kansas grasshopper. And you just come out, you've got really long arms. And I'm hopping around. It's hard to get. This guy's got quite a reach. He's like a new bull. So even though it was now identified and different than locusts in other parts of the world, people still thought it was

the same locust in the Old Testament, which newspapers helped push this idea. The San Antonio Daily News explained to readers that the locusts were, quote, the regular locusts such as we read of in the Bible. What? Wait, why? What is that? Is this? Okay. Wait. So this is now propping up. So as usual, there are some in our population who find a way to think, is that Jesus cracking the door open? That's right. You know why these locusts are here, gay. Good news. Let them buy your flesh and eat your crops. The Lord of cometh. 1874 was a tough year for American farmers. The economy collapsed in 1873. So they were already having problems selling their crops. And then there were dust storms all across Kansas. The monthly weather review, quote, in the latter part of November,

vast prairie fires occurred in the far west and several dust storms filling the air with fine and unpalatable particles, which are known to remain suspended in the air for many days and sometimes are firmly precipitated with water forming the celebrated black rain. It sounds like meteorologists used to be a lot more dynamic. Who doesn't love black rain? Yeah. And now it's called chocolate rain, by the way. It is. They call it the celebrated black rain. So yay. All right. Finally. It's raining black. The root for hell rain. Finally. The winter of 1873, 1874 was especially rainy. Farmers were very excited by the rain, but then it was followed by a very dry, very hot spring. I wish it hadn't rained so much.

Yeah, that was fucked up. So it's like they're breaking heat temperatures. So people know the lowest checks in the mail. Extreme drought comes. Apparently it was so bad that Kansas earned the nickname Droughty Kansas. Very creative. How did they now? How do you how does one go about finding a way to add a Y to something? Well, it's how actually we pretend to speak Spanish. Right. Okay. In America. Probably some marketing genius. Guys, look, I've figured it out. Okay, it's taken a while. I'm trying to find a way for you guys to spin this. Lean into it. Own it. Droughty Kansas. All right. Now, run this piece of paper. You will find my banking information. That's my account and my routing number. Droughty could have a dash and a Y or it could just have

a regular Y. And I believe the amount that makes sense is around $10,000. I'll see myself out. Thank you, gentlemen. What's that? Somebody say something? Well, really bad. We were hoping for more than one idea and also that's like a one-tenth of an idea. All you did was add a Y to a word. Well, I added a word and a Y to the word, to be fair. Let me just put my briefcase down. I did not think this would take so long. Okay, sure. We can open it up for some spitballing. How about this? Drought Kansas doesn't have the E. Kind of goes the more classical route. Well, now it's just descriptive. Exactly. Yeah. Now, again, on that piece of paper, you will find my routing information, also my banking information,

the name of the bank. I shall see myself out. If you touch that door knob, I'm going to cut your hand. Okay. All right, then. Let's just... It's a little... I guess that's why they call you Murdery Ryan. This is also known as Bloody Kansas. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so we don't take a lot of shit here. All right. Well, maybe I'll stay. Yeah, stay. Why don't you stay and come up with some ideas? Come up with some ideas. That's a good idea. That's a good idea. That's a great idea. Yeah. All right, great. Okay. Can anyone have this fruit salad? A Kansas pioneer, Susan Prophet, wrote, quote,

the grasses seem to wither and the cattle bunched up near the creek and the well, so no air seemed to stir the leaves on the trees. All nature seemed still. The Union paper wrote, quote, misfortunes never come singly and a dry spell brings with it. Any number of disasters and inconveniences, a drought nourishes shink, cinch bugs, cinch bugs, sunstrokes, grasshoppers, and profanity. What? Who's... Do you want the list again? Yeah. Cinch bugs, sunstrokes, grasshoppers, and profanity. I mean, I guess it makes... It's not a direct side effect, but my... If your world is screwed, you aren't going to swear more. It's probably because you're just taking fucking locus the whole

time. Yeah. I mean, look, I don't swear. You swore earlier anytime on this show today. If I was in that sort of circumstance, I might use an F word. Absolutely you would, because you used it unsolicited multiple times today. I don't think so. The one thing that loves a wet winter followed by a hot to dry spring, locusts. Right. So the locusts came out of the Rockies, the eastern Rockies, and they moved into Kansas. Just that sound when you're just like, all right, honey. Hold on. Let me open that window. Oh, no. On a July morning, a 12-year-old girl in Kansas noticed the sunlight was dimming. It was becoming dark. A fast-moving cloud of something was blocking the sun,

and then she heard a whirring, rasping sound. And then she saw, quote, a moving gray-green, shiny between this, a moving gray-green screen between the sun and the earth. Well, David, what was that screen? I don't know yet. Well, let's keep reading. Objects started to drop out of the sky. They hit the house. Like twisters, just like cattle and car trees. That's right, cattle. They were locusts. A man in Edwards County, Kansas, quote, I never saw such a sight before. This morning, as we looked up toward the sun, we could see millions in the air. They looked like snowflakes. You mean they were liberals? Put your tongue out. Put your tongue out. Catch a snowflake.

I'm dreaming of a locust storm. Another quote. They look like a great white glistening cloud, for their wings caught the sunshine on them, and made them look like a cloud of white vapor. It seemed as if we were in a big snowstorm, where the air was filled with enormous-sized flakes. That's disgusting. Yep. The locusts would block the sun for six hours in some air. By the way, so far, the only benefit that I've heard of on those hot days are you're just like, ah, thank you locusts. Oh, I agree. I mean, nothing is better in Jowdy, Kansas than blocking the sun. Bingo. And now that's while they're in the air. When they descended, that's when the real nightmare started.

Mm-hmm. The farmers ran to cover their wells, because if anything, they needed the water. If the water gets fucked up by locusts, it's bad. And then they would save what crops they could. Save your corn. Save your corn. Well, some guys would run out and try and pick as many as much corn as they could. Come on, we're going to harvest. We're going to harvest in five minutes. We're going to do five minutes of harvest. We're going to do five minutes of harvest. Come on, harvest, harvest, harvest, harvest, harvest. Farmers would cover gardens with blankets. There we go. Just put a little blanket over that. That'll do it.

But there were just too many locusts. Hold on. I'm going to tuck my yard in. Others use boxes and cardboard or whatever they could find to put over their plants. There we go. We're going to have a good harvest. But the locusts covered every plant and tree. Sometimes so many locusts would land on a tree that they would break the limbs from their weight. Oh, my God. What? That's a lot of bugs. That's a lot of bugs. What can't they do? They would even devour the bark off the trees. Oh, my God. Corn stalks. Corn stalks were flattened and eaten.

Grain was gone. The locust ate the best part of the wheat and left the rest. They would devour our entire watermelons and took everything off of fruit trees. When they were done, peach pits would just dangle from the empty branches. Oh, my God. I like that they still were hanging there. That is the most fuck you move out of it. Oh, yeah. In general, clearly, they have very similar taste to what we like to eat. They're like, corn sweet. Husk's not good. Peaches are great. Pits are not. It's like, goddamn it. A farmer's corn crop would be eaten in a day. That must be fun to watch.

And it's also interesting to wonder if they did the thing where they went, cha-cha-cha-cha-flip, cha-cha-cha-cha-flip. Oh, yeah, they go in. Okay, right. Put their little locust bibs on. Oh, it's going to be a good meal, boys. Eat up. Yep. Yeah, butter. There you go. Salt. They devour barley, buckwheat, tobacco, strawberries, spruce, apple trees, even laundry that was hung out to dry. Come on, let's eat some of these shirts. And they ate each other. What? Okay, so, all right. So what you're telling me is there's no negotiating with these terrorists? No, absolutely not. Because the second you have a hostage, they're like, I'll eat him right now. You're like, what the fuck? What just happened?

Power move. Those strawberries are good. I'm going to eat you. Wait, what? A historian in St. Louis, quote, one farmer south of this city had 15 acres of corn eaten by them yesterday in three hours. Oh my God. That's like Roger Ebert's numbers. They mowed it down close to the ground just as if a mowing machine had cut it. Oh my God, in three hours, 15 acres. Yeah. Yeah. But they didn't eat Chinese sugarcane or peas. So weird. We're allergic to sugarcane. Yeah, peas are kind of gross. We don't like peas either. They left them alone. What they really liked was onions. What? These guys are fucking weird. And they and farmers started a report they could smell onions as a swarm approach. That is horrifying.

That is disgusting. I don't brush their teeth. I mean, but whatever. It's just disgusting. Just be like, oh God, honey, did you just burp spring onion now? Oh God, the windows. Oh God, onion locusts. I wish we had a gum plant. We should give them a mint. Yes, that would be the idea. And so when they were done with the crops and the trees. What was for dessert? They would eat fence posts, axe handles, the leather stirrups off horses, bridles, gloves. They were attracted to the salt from perspiration on handles and saddles and gloves and things like that. I am always turned on when I see that stuff. Rarely can I go

buy an axe handle without taking a big ol... Honey, I'm just going to go put that axe handle in my mouth for a minute. So salty from the farmer. They would eat anything that was not locked away. And then they began to, first they would strip the paint off the building. Which, by the way, if it timed properly could just be a great time to repaint. Unless there's more to what you're saying. Well, it's like fire regenerates the forest. Right. It's the same thing with the way a locust... The circle of life. Yeah. So they'd go into the farmhouses. They would eat anything not locked away in a wood or metal container. Barrels and cupboards were attacked and emptied. Locusts would destroy curtains and clothing. When people went to sleep, they had to shake

their bedding to get all the locusts out. And it was lucky if they didn't have to shake the bedding again when they woke up. I would never sleep. How are you sleeping? How are you sleeping? No. Who's sleeping through that? I just... I don't care what like fucking pioneer days, whatever it is. I'm not sleeping through a night of bugs. By the way, yeah, you are. I mean, you're not sleeping, but you're definitely in bed. Like, maybe in 200 years, things might be okay. Oh, can you imagine? Just like, feel him crawl on you? No. Just like, God. Oh, no. He's on my salty penis. Oh, wait. Wait a minute.

That's Jimmy. It's a game we play. So, yeah. So one woman was pregnant. No. She was almost due. A pioneer wrote that her husband had gone insane from fright due to the locusts. Wow. Okay. I assume he just saw the locusts coming, started screaming and ran off into the... I mean, he's probably just like, oh, I can't do it again. I can't keep rebuilding. The pregnant woman said her clothes were eaten while she wore them. Quote, I was wearing a dress of white with a green stripe. The grasshoppers settled on me

and ate up every bit of the green stripe in that dress before anything could be done about it. That just sounds like a scene in like a dirty 80s movie. Yeah. Well, it's a horror movie. Clothes eating bugs? Yeah. I mean, nobody... Are they just really funny? The bugs? Yeah. They're just like, they're hilarious. And they also just ate the green stripe. They didn't eat the white.

Wait, what? Maybe they had her... Yeah, they only ate the green stripe in the dress. What? Yeah. So she just had a sash? Yeah. I miss pregnant. I don't know. I wonder if the stripe was a crop, like... Dude, I would love... Horizontal or... I would just love to be able to have a conversation for two minutes with a locust and just be like,

why the stripe? Oh my God. What are you guys doing? It's really good. We like the salt. Yeah. So everything is, we're big on just fucking around. We like the salt. Well, not only do we like to eat, but we also just like to fuck with people's heads. Get in that, get in that mind. I'm living in your brain, crazy lady. Oh, God. Laura Engels Wilder, who, if you're very old, there was a show called Little House on the Prairie, and she wrote a book that was turned into Little House on the Prairie, the TV show.

So she was a child of the Minnesota and wrote of the sound of the crops. Quote, you could hear the millions of jaws biting and chewing. Other people said it sounded like crackling fire as the locust ate crops. It kind of is. At this point, the guy who went crazy, the guy with the pregnant wife, I'm 100% on his side. I would go mad and run off into the. Yeah, into nowhere. But they would find you.

Just scream. They would find you. Yeah. Wilder described when family members came back in the house after battling the locusts. Quote, their clothes were covered with grasshoppers. Some jumped into the hot stove where Mary was starting supper. Elas, eat up. Ma covered the food till they had chased and smashed every grasshopper.

She swept them up and shoveled them into the stove. Smart. Yeah, that's right. Now they're kindling. Yeah, fire. There's a lot of burning of locusts that was. That's one of the best way to get rid of them, but how do you burn? They would have a they would have a bonfire.

And then people would just go out into the crops and pick them off and put them in a basket and then throw them in the fire. So they essentially at one point were just harvesting locusts. Yeah. The locusts would move on after a couple of weeks, but not before laying eggs in the soil. Fuck. Land bedbugs. It's literally they're living in a horror.

Yes, yes. The New York Times wrote, quote, the air is literally alive with them. They beat against the houses, swarm in at the windows and cover the passing trains. They work as if sent to destroy. Jesus covering. This was a much bigger locust swarm than had previously been seen. All the ones we talked about before were pretty localized. Okay.

So in July, a judge and meteorologist, because that's he was back then. Yes. Yeah, I'd have two jobs. There's a 70 percent chance I find you guilty. Let's go to the five day. Also bugs in the air. So in Nebraska, he measured a swarm as it passed. And he telegraphed towns and around nearby to see where the swarm was and how big it was.

And he calculated the speed of the swarm as it passed overhead for five days. What? A swarm of bugs that took five days to fly overhead. It took the length of the swarm. It's five days of constant swarm flying over. That's correct. I mean, they got to get better flight patterns. Were they going to conga line?

They're just it's just big. There's just a lot of it's a five day journey for the bugs. Yeah, I mean, that is so, so many bugs. He calculated the swarm was 1800 miles. Oh, and 110 miles wide. Oh, my God. Who who wants to live at that point? Oh, I don't know.

Oh, my God. 198,000 square miles of locust. What did you say? One giant locust cloud that was 198,000 square miles. Picture 198 square miles. And now picture 198,000. You're talking like the whole everything you see the northeast. You're talking like from a satellite.

You're talking about an enormous cloud like you see it from space. Yeah. Yeah. This is I believe the Guinness Book of World Records has it as the largest like group of flying. Well, I'm sure they appreciated that on her. The weight of all the locusts in the swarm is estimated to be 27 million tons. Dave, I can't handle hearing this.

How could you live in it? But I know, right? Seriously. How could you 27 million tons of bucks? Oh, my God. So the farmers tried to fight back to to save their crops. What is there? They began like we're going to have a rational conversation.

We're going to sit down and talk to them rationally. All right. Hello. I'm a farmer. Would you please leave? Eating your skin. Eating your eyes. Now you're naked.

Ow. Now you're naked. Now you're naked. Okay, that's my dog. You're totally naked, not by his penis. It's a terrible combination. Eat his skin. There's sweat on it.

Eat his bones. That's his bones. Even send him home. Hey, buddy. Dead. The farmers started lighting fires and would explode gunpowder in their fields when they're if anyone's going to ruin our crops. It's us.

How about we go to war with these motherfuckers? We're going to blow them up before they have a chance to eat it. It's just the the most American thing. I bet you go to any other country where there's locusts and no one was like, what about we blow them up in the field? I think we're all saying the same thing. We got to bomb them. They would also shoot at the swarms with shotguns.

That had to be extremely satisfying, but pretty. Oh, my God. So great, but so great. I mean, you would literally blast them and a hole would appear in the in the. Which had to feel cloud for a second and then just fill it. There was a story that I read of one guy who the locusts came and he and they came really fast and just all landed and he broke off a willow branch and just started going through his corn like swatting them off.

And he thought he was making progress and he turned around and it was just all like it's done. I mean, if you kill a million, you've not done anything. Yeah. I mean, it's 198,000 square miles. I mean, it's just, yeah. It's actually bombing them makes sense now, the more I think about it. Yeah.

Some would just go out there and hit them with wood beams or farm tools. Entire families would go out into the fields to fight the locusts. They used brushes, brooms, branches, anything they could quote, hungry chickens, hurried to this scene of action. So they just like a chick, you're like, we'll, we'll fight them with chickens. Go, go. Chicken. It's a buffet.

Many farmers heard the swarms were coming before they arrived, but knowing ahead of time didn't mean much. Some tried to burn a barrier around their land hoping the fire and smoke would keep them out. So they would. They can't find a fire around the borders. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like building a wall to keep them out. One farmer tried to stop the locusts by digging a ditch on the border of his land.

He filled it with sticks and leaves and anything that would burn. And then when the locusts came, he set it on fire. It did almost nothing because soon there were so many locusts that their bodies put out the fire. Well, I think I did something morally. I feel good. This feudal effort, so a bunch of guys did that. It's feudal. So then they started digging ditches and then the locusts would come and go on the ditches

and then they'd bury them and kill them. But still, there were still too many. I mean, it's just such a pointless. Yeah. Some farmers tried machines. Well, also if you do that next year, you're going to have locust plants. That's right. They, the way can they really grow if you get a nice rain?

Some farmers tried what is known as the hopper dozer. So you took a sheet, iron scraper and you smeared it with tar. That sounds pretty complicated so far. And then you put it by a couple of horses and they would pull it over the locust covered fields and all the locusts would stick to the tar. And then, you know, you'd put them in the fire. So you made giant flypaper. That's right.

Horst. It worked somewhat, but you can only do that when the ground was perfectly flat. But there were just too many locusts for it to really have an effect. And a farmer couldn't do that over his crops, obviously. Yeah, true. A man named Jay King of Boulder created what was basically a locust vacuum cleaner. This I like a little bit more. So it's also pulled by a horse.

This I'm getting off board with. It has two large tubes that go down to the ground. And then the tubes go up into a chamber that has a fan inside. And the fan, as the fan is moving inside the chamber, it creates suction. And the locusts would get sucked up and then they would hit a screen and drop into a bag so they could be taken and dumped into the fire. It's pretty good. Worked pretty well considering.

But it also was only good on flat ground. Also, it got clogged a lot with locusts, especially the screen. Costs $50. Well, there's just, there's nothing you can do to get rid of that many of something. No. Yeah. It was absolutely no way. States passed tax breaks for anyone who built a locust killing machine.

Okay. I like that. I love that all they can ever think of is tax breaks in America. Yeah, right. How about if we give you some money off on your tech? Yeah, I would rather some money. There were newspaper stories about farmers creating devices to kill the locusts. The Marshall Tri Weekly Herald reported a man who created a machine

that killed locusts by the acre. But there was no description. Good. That's what you need. Just that. All right. We've given you all you need. Now go find one.

You know what I would do? Hey, grasshop. What? I would put on a huge locust costume and pretend like I was their god and just lead them to another property. Gentlemen. Now see, I bet. Gentlemen, it's I from your property.

I'm a lady. Whatever you are matters not. The chosen land is not here. It's over there. Then why did why if it doesn't matter what we are, why did you say gentlemen? I'm sorry. You're getting hung up on something very small compared to what I'm talking about. But I'm sorry.

Ladies and gentlemen. Is that better? Well, it's a little late. It's a little late now. Here we fucking go. So I'm just merely trying to say that the time is of the essence. We should move to New York. I'm your god.

Stop giving me this sort of. I'm not following you. I'm not following you. Let me massage you this piece of shit. I'm not a good lord. I didn't know. I'm not. I'm.

Oh, where are my bros at? I deaf. I didn't look ladies, ladies. Are there more than ladies? Listen, I'm sorry. There's a lot of it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Are you? That's too late. Look, please. I'm so sorry, ladies. The ladies are gentlemen. You know, you know who will follow us? All the dudes. So why don't you get the fuck out of here, giant locust?

I'm your god. Not anymore. My god's a lady. Oh, so frustrating. Scram. Excuse me? Scram. I thought you said it's cram,

which I was going to say with a man's name. Anyway, whatever. This is a costume. I don't even give a shit. I can't believe we're talking. Yeah, no shit. That face. We figured that out ages ago.

Get the fuck out of here. You know everything. You're two steps ahead. You know it all, don't you? Let's eat his hair. So newspapers are writing stories. A grasshopper destroyer was built by Thomas Munson. A JC Meltzer built something that crushed locusts

as it was pushed, another man created a machine that could kill a bushel of locusts an hour. None of these had descriptions, but they're all written about in papers. Other states finally passed laws protecting birds that ate locusts like quail, prairie chickens, and snipe. But really nothing worked. There were just too many locusts.

They destroyed crops and natural growth, and that wasn't even the worst. Locusts also shit everywhere. Ponds and streams were now brown. And this disgusting water. So it's not just, it's also dead locusts and shit. Like you had a music festival. And no one could drink the water, animals, humans.

Horses and cattle refused to drink it. And the animals were already in a bad place because everything they ate was gone. Birds and farm animals started eating dead locusts to survive. Hogs grew fat, but the domesticated birds like chicken became inedible to people as they now had a foul taste. Oh, well, yeah, they had that onion bug smell.

That's right. Although you would think the onion would make a chicken taste not. You know, here's what we got to do, is start feeding them thyme. Think if you think about that. A little. We're going to have a delicious bird on our hands.

A little paprika. All right, here's what we're going to do. Some butter. We're going to leave out some basil, some butter, a little thyme and some paprika. Hopefully the locusts eat it. When the chickens eat those, we're going to have a really nice seasoned bird.

Oh my God, this is going to be great. In Texas, the locusts appeared in mid-August and attacked the cotton. Although some farmers after said it was easier to pick cotton after locusts had eaten all the leaves. Swarms darkened the sun for five consecutive days as they headed for the Rio Grande. In Minnesota, Nicolette County paid people

altogether 25,053 cents to bring in 25,053 bushels of dead locusts. Children were paid five cents a pound in many places. That's just. I think it's safe to say we had a locust problem. I just, God damn. But what a jobs program. I know, but just like if that's what you're doing

as a kid, just picking up dead bugs. That I would be fine with as a kid. As a grown up, I would go absolutely crazy. Now the pioneers in the remote areas had it worse. They didn't have a lot of food stored and couldn't look to neighbors for help. So by the end of 1874, only one family out of 10 had enough supplies to get through the winter.

They started leaving their claims, especially in the hearted areas of West Kansas and Nebraska, and they headed back east. Some would write signs on the side of their covered wagons like eaten out by grasshoppers. Easy. Going back east to live with wife's folks. Or just like the first one of the social media.

Or from Sodom, where it rains grasshoppers, fire and destruction. That's a good one from Sodom. Yeah. The population of Kansas dropped by a third. Oh, my God. Because of fucking bugs. Unless you did a locus census. That's true.

Some people are unable to leave because of all the debt they had. They joked that locus had eaten everything but the mortgage. I'll bet you that joke was not such a huge joke. It was probably one of these jokes. Right, what a God. Sometimes it feels like they've eaten everything aside from the mortgage. Is that supposed to be funny, Danny?

Is it supposed to be funny? Oh, shit, he's crying. He's crying, guys. Guys, Danny's crying. They took it all. Oh, fuck. They took it all. They took me.

They took everything. Just eat me, too. And sometimes they ate me instead of just all the stuff that I had. And sometimes they ate me. And sometimes they ate me. And sometimes they ate me instead of just all the stuff that I had. Hey, Billy. Hey, Billy, did you hear him?

He said we could eat. Danny said we could eat. Oh, no, wait a minute. Are you just a bunch of locusts in my friend's skin? No, we're hungry people. Oh, well, that's all so shameful. Have you ever seen the movie The Road? I don't think there's movies.

So some people also just didn't want to give up the investment they had and the time they had put in. Other people are emotionally connected to the land now. And then others had nowhere to go. No transportation, no place to go. I mean, yeah, you are completely screwed. I mean, that is relatable. The ones who stayed needed help.

Obviously, they looked to the federal local governments. Of course, they're getting nothing there. They barred from family or friends. Some mortgaged their land. Some were starving. St. Louis Republican quote, we have seen within the past week families which had not a meal of victuals in their house. Families that had nothing to eat, save what their neighbors gave them.

And what game could be caught in a trap since last fall? 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 inscription starved to death, painted on it. So that's not great. I mean, it's not a great start to read in the local paper.

Yeah, no, you're like, go to the sports pitch. Yeah, go to the sports pitch. But most western papers and governments tried to actually downplay the devastation. Because they were worried negative publicity would discourage people from heading west to settle and hurt investment. Oh, sweet. A plan thought out the whole way through. One wrote, quote, we hear a great many exaggerated reports of the damages grasshoppers have done, which are hardly credible.

And it is of no earthly benefit to give them currency. In fact, we believe it is damaging to the future prospects of the different localities for the citizens to start such stories. The impression will gain credence in the east that some of these sections of the country are doomed and to suffer from grasshopper visits continuously because people will not stop to think that this is but a chance occurrence. It's amazing. It's just like, yeah, the way and you know, some people call it the American spirit, Dave.

I call it. But the ability to just be like, well, we don't want to tell them the truth. That'll change the plan. Jesus Christ, if we tell them the truth, they're not going to want to come out here. Exactly. This place is a fucking nightmare. I mean, what is like? Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, you know, but like you just had general trust.

Like if you went to the travel agent and you were like, is this place nice? And they were like, it's nice and it's a war zone. That's just what doesn't happen. But still somehow we're able to just be like, well, we don't want to reveal the end. Let them die without no cell. So the governor of Kansas and Nebraska didn't want to set up actual state help. So they set up internal private relief agencies to collect and hand out food and supply. They privatized it.

Well, they essentially, yeah, so instead of using their state power or asking the federal government, they're like, well, what if we just have charities that we watch over? That's basically like that's essentially like the old timey task force. Well, we're going to get a task force. That's right. And then if the state asks or gives out money or if they ask federal government money, it makes it sound worse, so the governors also don't want it to seem like it's bad. No, no, no, for sure.

The way to handle a big problem is to not do anything so that other people don't know about it. That's right. So the Nebraska Relief and Aid Association was created to quote, collect money, provisions, clothing, fuel, seeds, and other necessary supplies from private sources. So essentially a go fund me. It is a go fund me. There we go. They're trying to avoid a federal government response.

The OMAB wrote, quote, we are confident that Nebraska will be able to take care of... They're in the pocket of big insects. We can't read that. The point you give me, the B. Everything's fine on the locus front. Move, move, move, Yankees. The OMAB wrote, quote, we are confident that Nebraska will be able to take care of all the people who really want without legislative aid.

Not everyone agreed. The Omaha Daily Republican noted, quote, some prudent people get more than they ever had, and the worthy starve, as was the case in the Chicago fire. Too much care cannot be observed in distribution. It is due alike to suffers and contributors. So this same sort of pattern had happened with the Chicago fire. Where some were overcompensated and some weren't compensated at all, right? Yes.

Shocking. Nanny Klein has a main part. You can't read it in the shock doctor. Yeah, right. The victims of the swarms were now being called grasshopper sufferers. Meanwhile, people who were starving were now pillaging for buffalo bones in the prairies. They would carry the bones to railroad stations and sell them to people who were passing through. Oh, my God.

They made $4 a ton for bones and $8 a ton for horns. There were so many people selling buffalo bones that the amount of bones carried by trains was six times what it had been in 1872. Wow. As it became colder in the fall, the locusts would gather on railroad tracks because the rails were heated by the sun during the day and stayed warm into the night. We've really built them quite a little palace, haven't we? Thought of everything. In the early morning, the now cold locusts would not be able to move when the trains came.

Mm-hmm. The massacre would create slippery tracks from locust guts. Even when you kill them, they're oiling up the tracks? Trains on a hard time, safely handling going up or down grades because the wheels would just spin. I can't believe there's so much locust juice that you're spinning out a train. The government report stated, quote, that the oil from their crushed bodies reduced the traction so as to actually stop the train, especially on an upgrade. Wow. That is shocking.

Oh, my God. The Missouri State Entomologist stated that animals were happy to eat locusts. By the way, it was about to go out of business until the... What's going on? Oh, shit. We should get a reporter out there. They're probably behind the locusts. The Missouri State Entomologist stated that animals were happy to eat locusts and a man had done the same in ancient times.

He was saying this because he was proposing people start eating locusts. That is some wild shit. You people used to love to eat locusts, really? Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Now you go on and eat them all. There's a bunch of pages in the Bible about the locust Sammy and the locust locust hero, then there's the locust barbecues. There's a whole... In the New Testament, there's a whole chapter of recipes.

Have you ever had slow-roasted locust? Oh, yeah, of course. Yes, locusts. That's like my grandma. Locusts is the best. My grandma made locusts. Oh, love of it. That's really great.

Falling off the thigh. He was saying this because he was proposing people eat locusts. It would accomplish two things. One, it would solve the starvation issue. And two, it would get rid of the locusts. Yes, yes. Don't look at it as two separate problems you've now created and flamed. It's one big solution.

He claimed they were as nutritious as oysters. Oh, they're sky oysters. That's all they are. Oysters of the cloud. I just love that anybody would say oysters are nutritious. Yeah, if you're going to sell me on eating a bug, there's a thousand things that can come before oyster. There's so many things before oyster.

Pretty much everything. All you need is nine beers and then you can eat locusts. Yeah, you just, it's like an oyster. Put it down real quick. Do it with some lemon and some hot sauce and don't let it touch your taste buds. So you avoid the taste, you just slip it on through. It's delicacy that if it touches your tongue, you're going to throw up. He also said grasshoppers tasted like nuts.

If you took off the legs and wings and then fried them in butter. Well, I mean, he basically has found the fair diet for America. No shit. He also said one can make a nice locust soup. Oh yeah, yeah. He published locust recipes in a book about the plague. A one was John the Baptist style, which was fried with honey. Jesus Christ.

This guy's going all in on this locust thing. He wrote, quote, when boiled and afterwards stewed with a few vegetables and a little butter, pepper, salt, and vinegar. That's really seasoning me a lot. Make it excellent, make it excellent, fricassee. Oh my God, what is he doing? Have you ever had a locust quiche, my Lord? How about some locust pie?

Would you like some locusts in your egg? Say when? So he was so pleased. Oh, he sent some locusts to a St. Louis caterer who made meals out of them and was so pleased. He said he would have them on his menu every day if he could get a decent supply. Well, I've got good news for the chef. You're going to get them. Supplies, not an issue.

No, no, no. Cooks are the issue. Hungry pioneers tried the recipes. Some said if they were fried after being slathered with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper, they tasted like crawfish. Okay. Yeah. Well, because you're putting all butter and salt.

Yeah. Whatever. Listen, listen, Americans, just eat your fucking bugs. They don't. There's no way they taste like crawfish. No, I mean, come on. No, but yeah, it's, I mean. There's also, there's also crawfish are fun to eat.

You won't eat the chickens that have eaten them and now you're just going to eat them. Come on. Some put crispy locusts in broths and stews, but more and more settlers refused to eat them because they had watched them destroy their farms and hated. I get that. I mean, it is a way for you to eat your crops sort of, I guess. Yeah. The lost crops altogether totaled about $50 million in 1874.

It was 74% of the total value of U.S. farm product. Oh my God. As the private relief efforts got going, there were many reports of abuse of funds and improper distribution of goods. Shouldn't be. Now people from all over the country set money, but then land agents started warning that too much relief would make the farmers dependent on charity and harm their work.

Oh my God, Dave, stop. Jesus Christ. You know what? These farmers are lazy. Imagine. Given money, they're not going to want to make court. I almost said imagine and then had to stop. Now this argument hurt the relief effort.

Less people sent money and the hungry were starving. And this was also the exact same thing that happened after the Chicago fire. Same pattern. Grasshopper sufferers began to have to prove they were worthy of aid. Tant? Now it's no. I mean, they all got screwed. This is my daughter, Isabel.

Isabel, go ahead and cough up some of your inside. There's nothing in her. See that? It's a piece of her. She's rotten on the inside because she's slowly dying. I'm not going to lie. We've seen a lot of girls rotting on the inside today. But can she tap?

Yes. We've seen a lot of them who can tap too. Anyway. So Nebraska farmers had to sign a pledge of oath that they had nothing that they could sell for food or clothing. Well, I mean, look, if you're going to make a stupid fucking rule, then I'm going to lie at your oath ceremony without question. Oh, God, the amount.

Yeah, I got nothing. Well, I got nothing. You realize the Lord's watching. Yeah, yeah, I got absolutely nothing. Got nothing at all. Has to be telling the truth. Sorry for your loss, sir. Thank you.

I don't know. And I don't know how I'm gaining weight during all this. I don't know. Yeah. You also have a lot of jam on your shirt. That there is a jam fight outside. People are throwing jams. I just walked into it.

Just happened to just happen to be right down the middle of my shirt right up. Yep. I got hit right in the face with a big old thing of jam and a turkey leg and some buttered sourdough. You took the oath. Yep. I put my hand up, swore to God, all the whole thing. Fried chicken stuck in your fingers.

Chicken all over the Bible. Yeah, yeah. So I fell into a rotisserie. Where? Why did you eat some of it? Oh, they said I couldn't have any that I had to come over here. So. What sounds like you have friends who have a lot of food.

If there's jam fights and you're falling into rotisserie bins. No, no, I don't know any of them. Okay. I don't know those people. I was in the starving line. That's why I'm here. Okay. All right.

All right. Well, you took the oath. I mean, what can I do? I know you're telling the truth because you took the oath. Oh, God, it smells like pizza. Yes. It smells strongly like pizza coming right out of your mouth. I put it in my mouth.

If one did it no better and you had taken the oath, one would think that you had eaten recently. No, no, I haven't eaten in days. Days, like four or five or something except for the pizza and that's how it goes. All right. Well, look, we're giving you the eight. You took the oath, so. You ever had angel cake?

I think you have food. I'll be honest. I think this man. I don't. Okay, because you just. I don't. I'm thinking about food. Okay.

I'm thinking about it. Okay. I've never eaten food. I've never even had food in my life. That's the thing. That is not possible. What you just said is not helping your honest factor. I eat air.

Have you heard of Aryans? This is no. We're not going in that direction. No. Out. Get out. Take your aid. Go.

Jesus Christ. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it. I'm a lady. Okay, ma'am. Whatever. Lucky I'm not eating. Shut up.

Oh, I'll eat you. Go. So a relief distributor explained the process. Quote, if a man wants to help, he must go to one of the officers of the Relief Society and make a sworn statement that he has got nothing that he can sell to get anything with. He must sell his last cow and team. He must not have any seed, wheat, nor any money. Okay.

So we are looking for the broken. Sneaked. He can't. So what they want is for him to sell everything he has to get food. He, wait, in order to get the aid, he has to off everything he has. Everything. He can have nothing to sell if he wants to get charity.

So then what does he do after he eats? I don't know. And the media pushed the narrative that corruption was rife, and homesteaders who didn't need money were receiving it. Many farmers also refused aid because they quote, are not beggars. Wow. So now you have the other part of the American, right?

So you got the American thing of where everyone's like, well, you're a cheater. You don't deserve money. Meanwhile, those people went high off the hog. And then you got the other guy, the guy who wants to be the millionaire, who's like, I ain't no beggar. I ain't taking no charity. Yeah.

Good. As winter came, it became apparent that many people were going to starve. So the army stepped in. They had been observing and they knew it was a problem. They took over the relief effort and started handing out what they had. So they had stuff, you know, items, they're fighting a war. That's why they're there. So they give out coats, boots, blankets, things that will help people get to the winter.

And don't sweat on any of these. Please. If you sweat, it cuts. Like, and they cut. Bringing a bell for supper. You ever seen like a zombie movie where someone shoots a gun and then all the zombies come running because they lack sound, even though they're dead. And I don't know why that part was.

This guy sure talks about film a lot, doesn't he? Yeah. So I have a couple of issues. First of all, how can a zombie's eyes work if it's dead? What movie? How can it's ears work? What you understand what I'm saying? No.

Okay. Well, you will in about about 1970, 71, 72, you're going to figure that out. Not a living dead. George Romero. You don't want to get into running zombies and walking zombies. You want to have that fight right now? You want to have that fight right now? What's a movie?

Okay. All right. Yeah. I would do the same thing. I would back the fuck out. I would. So President Grant ordered the army to only give out clothing and no food. Smart, because you can eat that.

Okay. Good. So they still gave out rations though. They still were like, fuck it. Soon the state governments began to realize how inadequate the private relief effort was. People all over the area were on the verge of starving. And bodies piling up was maybe worse as far as discouraging pioneers than a locust attack.

I mean, yeah, that's certainly you're like, wait. Come on out to Kansas where everyone's just laying around dying. Yeah. I bet you're dying to come to Kansas. You can pick your own farm. Just take out the bodies and put them in a hole. Come on down to people bricks where you can buy humans and use them as bricks. Don't mind the smell.

The smell goes away. Come spring. Just wait until the flesh jerkies. If you hang up the dead, you can eat them. Let them dry in the sun. We stopped eating chickens around here a long time ago. But humans taste delicious all in off the bone. So papers start turning.

Now they've gone from writing articles about how the charity is all corrupt. And now it's where's the response. Worthy of the help. Now they start freaking out. They print a letter from David W. Frost, who was some sort of military guy. And a lot of them printed this letter. And he said in it, 10,000 people in Nebraska were going to die in two weeks from starving. In the east with so much in the east now they're getting conflicting information.

So the papers are trying to figure out what's going on. So the papers in the east are literally printing stories of starvation and then rebuttals of people who say it's not that bad. That is always my favorite thing of media is how we need, I mean, essentially one person who's close to right and then a lunatic. That's right. So locus states sent reps east to lecture and write appeals for aid in newspapers. They had to explain that the starving were worthy of aid.

They lectured how the farmers had been on the verge of great success before the locus plague. And they were not idle sloths. So they now they're lying because they were not doing well before the locus came. They have to embellish the financial crisis that happened. Yeah, they couldn't sell crops. So, but now many Easterners step up and start donating again. Congress passed a bill to send $30,000 worth of seeds to be planted. The army was given 150,000 to spend on relief supplies.

They ended up giving out two million rations in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and Dakota Territory. The afflicted states themselves finally issued bonds to fund aid. This all began a practice of this is the first time farmers were ever aided by the government, which obviously we know still continues to this day. With the immediate crisis averted and seeds in the ground, people now waited for spring to come. And of course, that meant the eggs. The eggs would hatch.

Oh, no. Missouri then passed a law requiring all able-bodied persons to dedicate one or two days a week to plowing and killing locused eggs and larvae. Sure, sure, sure, sure. This is fun. That's we're just asking you from one to two days a week. Can you commit an egg genocide? When spring 1875 came around, the trillion eggs the locus had laid the year before started to hatch.

Well, first of all, trillion is so much. And then that just leads me to the idea that Jeff Bezos has as many dollars as locusts. The ground was covered in squirming masses of baby locusts, which are known as nymphs. The cutest name. We're little. We don't know any better. Oh, I'm going to eat everything you love. Farmers were terrified.

Nymphs also ate a ton as they grew. And then after like six weeks, they would molt and begin to fly in April and early May. They began to move before flying and farmers began their battle. The little grasshoppers hopped. Farmers in Kansas killed hundreds of bushels of them. Professor F. H. Snow wrote that the flightless locus descended upon Lawrence, Kansas on the 25th of May. Soon, the lawns were gone. This time, tree leaves survived because they put pine tar around the trunks to keep them from crawling up.

Oh, OK. Interesting. One man defended his yard by killing 70 bushels of baby locusts in six days. Who's this guy? Who is this legend? But then cold came and a hard frost. That'll help. And that killed a lot of the locusts in the Kansas and Nebraska area.

But others grew wings. In Texas, the locusts came and ravaged. In Ellis County, quote, not a spear of grass or anything green was to be seen within a radius of 25 miles. Could you imagine? They began to die in mid-May around Denton. They were said to be in, quote, bushels. People cut them open and each contained one to three larvae of checketed flies. Apparently, some of the could kill them.

So the flies were somehow putting their larvae into the... I don't know how that's happening, but into the locus and killing them. It's interesting. I wonder how. I mean, maybe it's just when you get eaten. Yeah, who knows? In 1876, the number of locusts that swarmed over Texas was said to be truly astonishing. In Collin County, there were so many, they were, quote, so deep as to cover fences and the bodies

of trees upon which they would alight. A swarm that flew over Dallas was 2,000 feet high and 40 to 60 miles wide. People believed, as it was reported in the papers, that the locusts were flying toward Mexico, where they would fly out over the Gulf of Mexico and die. There was absolutely zero evidence of this. People were just like, you know where they're going? They want to have water deaths. Why would you...

I mean, I don't even need to add. I don't even need you to speculate. I mean, they were obviously going to Mexico. I mean, if they're flying, I mean, they're migrating in a way. That's what they're doing. So they're going to... Well, it's also in May, so Cinco de Mayo, some time in the area, where else would you want to celebrate? That's right, they love Cinco de Mayo.

I mean, I think this is how... When was the Mexican Revolution? But there's also stories of the same thing in Mexico. They're shooting shotguns at them and doing the whole thing. So trains were stopped in Flatonia, Austin, San Antonio, and Marion. There was almost... So trains can't run because there's so many fucking of these guys. There was almost no drinkable water in Lockhart because of all the decomposing locust bodies.

In San Antonio... Were stand-ups still doing shows? Yeah, yeah, they never... Why would you stop that when you can kill audience members? In San Antonio, it was reported that people were amused to see a woman trying to, quote, frighten away the predators with a tin rattle in queer movements of her body. Interesting. It's good to know that person has always been honest.

Yeah, right, right, right. You just need to talk to them. I cannot do a locust dance. They're in you. Oh, yeah. Your arms. Yeah, yeah. Oh, boy.

It's my body. It's how I move it. It's the locust thing. Your body's gone. Oh, sexy. Dave, I wish everybody got a chance to see what just happened over there. Yeah, I understand. Oh, you're not only standing.

You're selling. Oh, fuck yeah, I am. Smaller swarms continued all over the west. Farmers began planting later in the air, and this led to better harvest. So they would wait until the locust came through. And then it actually, because sometimes they were planting way too early, like January. And now they're planting later, and it's actually helping their crops grow. As some said, locusts were getting rid of the farmers who were weak and relied on fear and

apprehension instead of their trust in the Lord. That's right. I didn't want to say it, but that's true. One man said it would cleanse the ranks of farmers in Texas. Yep, that man's from Texas. In 1877, Congress established the US Entomological Commission for the specific purpose of dealing with the Rocky Mountain Locusts. Now all the states pushed for this.

They're like, we got to have some science. And so the federal government finally made a commission. Three-minute entomologists were chosen for the commission. They each took different regions to study. They set up networks of correspondence to gather information, and they issued reports. One of the guys correctly predicted when a swarm would arrive in Kansas after it had begun in Colorado, like in locust predictions. Right. This led A.S. Packard Jr. to ask in the American naturalist whether or not meteorologists

could, quote, foretell with a good degree of certain locust invasions. Okay, all right. I kind of want to live in a world where a meteorologist to go out and predict locusts. You're lucky, Dave, because you kind of are going to and you kind of already get that with the curveball we've thrown, the meteorological community who just must have been high and mighty on their dopplers their whole lives. And now we're like, and you've got to predict fire. They're like, wait, I went to college for weather.

It's like, I don't know if it falls under that now. It's so hot. Oh, yeah. It's a lot of people. But now you do the Wednesday A.S. report. Yeah, that's right. Ash report, smoke report, fire report. So in 1877, the Nebraska legislature passed the Grasshopper Act, which labeled locusts a, quote, public enemy.

The act required all able-bodied people to gather and fight the locusts. It was a grasshopper army. An email between 16 and 60 who did not work for two days a week fighting locusts would be hit with a $10 fine. Okay. Farmers in the Midwest lived in fear of another mass locust swarm, but they never returned in such numbers. And then over the years, the Rocky Mountain locusts slowly died out.

The last specimens were found in 1902, a male and female. And after that, they seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. There are a few ideas of why they are gone, but the true answer is not known. That's probably due to, most probably due to the destruction of their habitat by man moving in. That's right. It's what we call silver lining. It is believed they are extinct, but some think they are still in isolated populations in the Snake River basin of Ohio and in Yellowstone National Park.

Plotting. The idea that farmers were brave, patriotic, and resilient or worthy was in part due to the effort to get relief from eastern states to the federal government and to counter the argument that they were lazy and deserve no help. So the patriotic farmer idea sort of began then and it's still here today, even though most farms are now huge agribusinesses. How about them apples? Jesus Christ.

Just crazy, just crazy on every level. Crazy that we are so confident as a species, we are just so clearly in our heads, top dogs, that when we treat everything like a flea that we have to flick off, and it just shows you the balance of nature and all of that, we're not in charge. And obviously, it speaks volumes to our ability to fathom crisis in real time, process crisis, plan for crisis, and fix crisis. And when you add capitalism or corruptibility in the mix, I mean, that's it, and that's exactly what we're facing down the barrel of now.

What do you mean? Well, Dave, right now the government is... My government? The American government. Your government in a bipartisan fashion passed a bill that is the largest transfer of wealth, upward transfer of wealth in the history of economies. America. America, yeah, your locust capital of the world, yeah.

The United States of America. That's right, yeah, recently, recently. Good times. Is that what you mean? Yeah, but I think if it's a summarize, in summary, yes. In summary, you would say good times. In summary, I think the title of the episode should be good times. All right.

All right, we used to sign cars and then the world went away. What are you talking about? It's over. Everyone's out. Oh, yeah. Great plan, us. All right. All right, shit, that's crazy shit, dude.