Locust by Jeffrey Lockwood
A Book about an Insect that Changed the Course of American History
Mar 25, 2008
A Plague That Nearly Destroyed American Farmers
Thousands of children have grown up reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books. Among the unforgettable experiences in Laura’s adventuresome life was the grasshopper storm that nearly ruined the lives of her family and for a short time separated her father from the family. In the book, On the Banks of Plum Creek, we read:
The cloud was hailing grasshoppers. The cloud was grasshoppers. Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness. Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered. The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm.
It is one of many ‘testimonial’ excerpts that Jeffrey A. Lockwood includes in his book Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier.
It is a profound image that seems almost impossible to comprehend and leaves one wondering why we don’t experience such terrors today. Where did the grasshoppers go?
An Entomological Mystery
Where did the grasshoppers go? For Jeffrey Lockwood, the mystery was a challenge he could not ignore. In his book, he takes us on a journey into the past to understand the locusts (while farmers often called the insects grasshoppers they are in truth the only North American locust, the Rocky Mountain Locust) that decimated American crops and imprinted themselves on the psyche of the American west.
He shares with us the history of the insect and the fascinating personal histories of the entomologists who studied the Rocky Mountain Locust (Latin name Melanoplus spretus) and tried to understand the mysteries that surrounded it. He reviews the various and ludicrous ways people tried to avert or end locust plagues. And finally, he tackles the big question of their disappearance.
He covers the disappearance of the locust with a fine tooth comb. Lockwood studies each theory regarding their disappearance and reveals the weaknesses in those theories. Finally, like an attorney he provides his case study of who destroyed the locusts providing us with “three essential lines of evidence’ opportunity, means, and motive.
To Hold What is Lost
In addition to his case, Lockwood goes high into the Rocky Mountains to comb glaciers for evidence of the locust before the receding of the glaciers destroys all evidence. He searched for nearly five years and endured the ridicule of his colleagues before he found the evidence he needed and was able to provide the world with as solid a case as possible. Because of Lockwood’s hard work, the scientific community agrees that the case is closed and that the Rocky Mountain Locust is extinct.
Not a Dry Scientific Tome
While the amount of history and scientific data covered in the book might lead one to believe it is dull. Lockwood has a dry wit and his writing is both captivating and entertaining. His writing doesn’t conjure up the dust of a dry museum piece rather it delves into a past that is both fascinatingly and frighteningly alive, a past with many lessons for us today, if we will only listen.
Locust is not only worth reading because of the lessons we can learn but also because it is an excellent book.
Lockwood, Jeffrey A. Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier. Basic Book. 2004. ISBN 0-7382-0894-9
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