Nevada residents are sharing frightful videos on TikTok of clusters of Mormon crickets engulfing their driveways and backyards.
The giant cannibalistic bugs, which don’t directly harm humans, have blanketed roads and stunk up towns across the state. Though the latest outbreak of the hard-shelled insects started several years ago, it gained national attention this week after residents in Elko, one of the cities affected, went viral with their cricket videos.
One TikTok video that garnered more than 14.5 million views this week showed clusters of Mormon crickets covering a woman’s driveway, yard and walls. Her husband had been desperately trying to clear the bugs off their porch with a leafblower, she said in the video, as she stood “petrified” to return indoors for fear of them jumping onto her from the porch's roof.
Ted Verras, an Elko resident of nearly 15 years, said the outbreak appears to have worsened over the past several years.
Local infestations can get so severe, he said, that families have found themselves unable to enter their homes. The crickets also pose safety hazards out on the roads.
“I used to drive a truck and the crickets had been swarming across the road. People were running them over and I’m weaving through some curves and I dang near slid off the road because of them,” Verras, who is among the residents who posted videos of the bugs, said. “It literally makes the roads really slick so if it rains, you have people flying off the roads.”
When Verras worked for the state back in 2008, he said his job entailed plowing Mormon crickets off the roads using snow plows. But because these bugs are cannibalistic, killing them only attracts more of them, who come to munch on their fellow Mormon crickets’ carcasses. The outbreak was so severe this year, he said, that he decided to take to TikTok to show off the carnage.
“Honestly, the worst part is having to drive through them,” he said. “I feel sorry for the people whose houses are affected but these things smell nasty, and when you drive through, they get all over your vehicle. They get in the wheel wells and it’s horrendous.”
Memes about — or impersonating — the bugs have also begun proliferating on Facebook, where a public “Mormon Crickets” page launched this week has amassed more than 2,000 followers.
“Burger King, Wendy’s, and Kohl’s on Mountain City Highway, we’re coming for you. #elkonevada #noescape,” the page wrote in one post.
And on Twitter, users are reeling after learning about the existence of these fat, crunchy creatures.
“Are they called Mormon crickets because they don’t stop showing up at your door?” one user joked under a viral tweet about the bugs. “Maybe she just needs to convert.”
Outbreaks of Mormon crickets typically last four to six years, according to Nevada’s state entomologist Jeff Knight, and will eventually drop off as a result of natural predators. Their eggs remain in the soil, he said, until a drought cycle triggers them to finally hatch. Before 2019, Nevada went more than a decade without seeing the crickets.
Though the bugs don’t intentionally go after humans, their slippery remains have caused a number of car accidents, Knight said. They can also stain property and cause crop damage. But for many people, just having to look at them is enough to instill fear.
“A lot of people don’t like big scary, nasty-looking insects. These things get about the size of your thumb as an adult,” Knight said. “So when you have a couple hundred or a couple thousand of them in your yard, that can be, to some people, pretty terrifying.”
