Posted on 09/28/2006 5:29:23 AM PDT by Cagey
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Clouds of locusts have descended around the Mexican beach resort of Cancun, destroying corn crops and worrying officials in a region still recovering from the devastating fury of last year's Hurricane Wilma.
Traveling in dark fogs, locusts are grasshoppers that have entered a swarming phase, capable of covering large distances and rapidly stripping fields of vegetation.
"Imagine, they fly in the form of a flock. Imagine the width of a street," government official Martin Rodriguez said on Tuesday, describing the fields around Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Towns have formed pesticide-armed brigades and are winning the war against the 3-week-old plague that has left tourist areas unharmed, authorities said.
Squads wait until night when the flying insects are roosting on plants to blast them. They carry motorized backpack pumps to shoot chemicals in a crusade that has affected from 2,000 to 2,500 acres of farm land.
"It is a war, effectively," said German Parra, a senior agriculture official in the Gulf state of Quintana Roo, home of tourist resorts Cancun and Playa del Carmen.
Hot weather and an absence of mobility-limiting hurricanes have allowed the insects to breed more than normal but authorities hope to end the infestation in the next eight days.
The insects have focused on agricultural areas, sparing beachgoers another disaster after last year's Hurricane Wilma, which ravaged Cancun and other Caribbean coast resorts and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and lost revenue.
Destruction to corn crops has been lessened because the locusts came after most of the harvesting was finished, officials said.
Locusts, which typically come to the region in four-year cycles, are most famous as one of the 10 biblical plagues of Egypt. "We hope that God will take pity on us and help us," said Parra with a laugh.
Allow me.
BUSH'S FAULT!!
Algore blames it on global warming.
Obrador supporters?
WOuldn't that be Global Swarming?;)
Next up: Frogs!..............
...well, it could be worse. These insects could have built-in swords.
Muslims..
.......So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.
Get a flock of guinea fowl in there and they'll wipe those locusts out.
lol, perfect.
maybe someone can get a hold of peta and explain that to them.
A bold and forceful statement that must have taken a great deal of thought and research on the part of the writer. The locusts must not like Pina Coladas and other amenities available at the resorts.
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