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Town Fights Cricket Plague With Led Zeppelin
The residents of Tuscarora, Nevada are getting ready to fight the annual invasion of mormon crickets with the power of Rock-N-Roll. Trial and error has shown that the crickets don't think much of Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. The residents circle the town with boomboxes at regular intervals to drive off the millions of crickets. "It is part of our arsenal. You'll wake up and there'll be one sitting on your forehead, looking at you." says Laura Moore, an unemployed college professor and one of the town's 13 residents. The crickets devastate crops, cause slicks on the highway and evidently love rap.
TFA: "...best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets"
Mormons and Zeppelin don't mix?
Tuscarorans are preparing once again to get out their extension cords, array their stereos in a quarter-circle and tune them to rock station KHIX
Sounds like another Burning Man festival.
The TFA doesn't say they love rap. What it says is that the 2007 and 2008 crickets had "hipper tastes" (i.e. weren't as deterred by heavy-metal music as the 2006 crickets were). Apparently samzenpus mis-read "hipper" as "hip-hop" and assumed they love rap.
Le Sigh.
Also means the residents of Tuscarora might be applying selective pressure on the cricket population by playing loud rock music.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
How does a place with thirteen people in it qualify as a town, again?
... Discuss." ;)
They're not called Mormon Crickets because they're considered adherents to the faith, they're called Mormon Crickets because they're one of the fine local features the Mormons found waiting for them when they settled in Utah the mid 1800s. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Gulls .
Mormon Crickets are also not only not Mormons, they're not crickets either. They're shieldbacked katydids.
They're also cannibals.
And polygamists.
Tweet, tweet.