3/18/2004: Locust swarm
 

http://cellar.org/2004/locusts.jpg

Our Aussie friends might have something to say about this. It's the outback, New South Wales where thousands upon thousands of locusts are swarming for the last few days. Apparently it was caused by strange weather patterns because it followed a period of heavy rains. They're spraying to try to prevent breeding, but area farmers have lost most of their crops. full story

It turns out adult locusts can migrate 300 miles overnight. Coming soon to a town near you?

After she finishes sweeping them up, what's she gonna do with them? Where's she gonna put them?

During a survival training we were told that a locust, depending on the size, has more proteins than a steak.
So we tried it out, there're a lot of different possibilities, I prefere them in boiling oil with a little honey on them, really crusty :)

:vomit:
I'm not feeling the best today so thanx for pushing my stomach that bit further Pi :D

(besides people) What eats locusts, naturally ?

birds? really big birds? Lizards of some sort? .... I wonder what kind of a "trickle up" effect this has on the ecology..

Oh my god, they had better not head over my way (Sydney). I hate those things, I hate anything that jumps or has more then 4 legs and belongs to the critter world, I'll be screaming the house down if I have even one in my place, :worried:

So we can add bugs to the list of things Leah hates.

Let's see, 1) strange people from different cultures 2) family members of terrorists 3) bugs.

Anything else? Please share your hatred with us some more.

No, that just about sums it up for me. But spiders are on the top of my list.:)

Man, the chickens would love that.

Didn't you know that mostly everybody swallows up to 8 spiders during his life, and most of them while sleeping?
I solved the problem by catching 8 spiders and eating them with some ketchup. The only thing I didn't like were the hairy legs...
:yum:

No way, not me. Although I have swallowed a fly :vomit:
I'd rather not think about that.

Yeah this looks funny, and can be fun for 10 minits as you run around the yard as a tordado of hoppers fly sky high at your every step, but after that its just annoying. and noisy.

My mum (and all her neighbours in country NSW) have lost thousands of dollars worth of oats, and the already starving lambs have now much less food to eat poor babys. a good thing though, my mum said they appear not to be eating the hay stored that we have, because it is not green.

Just another slap in the face for us, 1st the droght, then the fires, then the flood, now this. what next?

The plague.

Then Armageddon.

:worried:

But i havent even started my list yet!!!

Come on Sparkz, it could be a lot worse. We could have suicide bombers blowin up our trains and buses or landmarks.

Im not even comparing it to a tradgedy like that. Noone could.

(though it may not be far off) i work in the CBD, spend 3 hours a day on a train and my building is right above the wynyard tunnel, trust me i know it could be a LOT worse!

I am just saying it feels like its never going to end. I mean for me i think the drought was the worst to experience, here in the city youd see ppl watering their gardens and having fountins flowing and on the weekend id go home and see my family digging tips for dead cows that had to be shot because there was no more food, and selling sheep for 15 cents each at the saleyard (if they didnt sell they to were shot). And then we had about 16 paddocks catch on fire which could have been a blessing in disguise because some crop started to grow from the burnt ground but it was then drowned in a flood ( not all that much rain but the ground (ruined from drought) wouldnt take the water) that was a couple of motnhs ago, a fresh crop (10,000) was about 14 days off release and little bugs come and eat it all.

My family doesn't rely solely on farming for our income, we all work independantly and the farm managers look after the homestead, but i couldnt imagine the stress this would have on FT farmers. no wonder there are so many suicides in Country NSW.

It sounds like im whinging but im not, im just giving the cellar my view on the IOD, what its like for me and how it affects us. im not comparing our situation to any other situation.

Drought, fire, flood, that's not whining. Folks go on about much less. I hope your weather patterns straighten out down there.

Disasters
 

Sparkz, didn't mean to offend. I wasn't inferring that you were comparing the farm disasters with terrorism I was just taking the viewpoint of 'No matter how bad it seems there is almost always someone out there who's got it worse than you/us'. I'm not from the country so I don't actually 'know' what it's like to have to deal with such problems. I can imagine how p!ssed you would be seein fountains running etc. (although the water in those fountains should not be drinkable water - hopefully) ppl washing their cars with water that could keep your livestock alive for a little longer, that would really be hard to cope with.

No offense taken, i know you didnt mean that i just wanted to clarify

:D

All Good
 

Sweet :)

Has that Krispy Kreme opened at Wynyard yet??
I'm stinging to get a box but I aint goin to Parramatta or wherever the other store is.

Hey Pearcie, what's this Krispy Kreme stuff your talking about.

Krispy Kreme
 

An amazing donut store. Been out in the states for ages, only just recently came to Oz, ones sposed to be opening at Wynyard soon, or may have already. I want some!!!

I want one also, I'll authorise your travel to go and get us some, Ok.:beer:

College Vehicle
 

Can you sort it out so I can take the college vehicle, I'm low on petrol ;)

No problem, just don't tell YOU KNOW WHO.

out of the loop
 

no it hasnt opened here yet, ill be the first to know one of my collegues is a "friend of krispy kreames" he has a hat and a badge its so funny. but they are SO YUMMY!!

i think ill put on about 10 kilo in the 1st week they do open though:(

YUM!! :D

Just think of them as 'land shrimp'.:yum:

"I don't know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she'll die."

My kids are still young enough that I remember reading that to them over and over. That's one of those experiences with my kids that I won't miss. Too repititious.

Just to clarify the water situation down here, the CSIRO (Aussie scientific research organisation), released a report last year that found that over 98% of water usage in Australia occurs *outside* of the major cities. It is a myth that the cities waste huge quantities of water, thus depriving the rural areas. The report actually recommended that water be diverted *from* rural areas to the cities, to support future population growth.

I'm not, repeat, not saying that no water is wasted in the cities, just that the extent of this wastage is nowhere near what is commonly believed.

yeah some rural areas do tend do waste a bit of it because you go outside and see that the dam is full or the tanks are up, so you might splurge out on a bath or water the lawn, but i assure you on our property its very rare. we dont irrigate either. Some farmers continued to drip for a while but its so obivious when you have a green lot in a land of brown and red. they were so unpopular at the local on a friday let me tell you!

also the areas in surveys like these classify places like the NSW central coast and surrounding areas as "country" areas. which they aren't. i now reside here and people call it "the country" and its just as much conjested as the city is. (well, nearly)

during the drought there were warning to please do not water your garden and if you really need to only do it at night (so it wouldnt evaporate immidently) some of my city neighbours would leave it on ALL night. water spilling blocks down the street. DUH.

The Aussies are getting KK's...oh what a joy they are...like little pieces of heaven in your mouth.

Hmmm...might be time for a late-night run down to Cottman and Bustleton...

krispy kreaames with locust sprinkles.

yikes, I just got home from the Block of Orange ( near Disneyland) and there was a Krispy Kreme on the way to the freeway. Very difficult to fight the temptation. The worst part is if you buy a dozen sometimes they give you another dozen for free!!

Oh, about the locust at least they don't hang around too long I don't think. I hear they're nasty little creatures.

But, are they kosher?

Texas size roaches!
 

Nothing a little DDT can't fix!

I knew an old lady that swallowed a fly. It wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. I don;t know why she swallowed that fly. Perhaps she'll die.

Leah, would you like to come visit my office when the 17 year cicaidas attack philadelphia?

Sorry for going so far off on a tangent, but:

I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she'll die.

I know an old lady who swallowed a spider, it wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly...

I know an old lady who swallowed a bird, isn't that absurd to swallow a bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider...

I know an old lady who swallowed a cat. Imagine that, to swallow a cat...

I know an old lady who swallowed a dog, what a hog to swallow a dog...

I know an old lady who swallowed a goat, she just opened her throat to swallow the goat...

I know an old lady who swallowed a cow, I don't know how she swallowed the cow...

I know an old lady who swallowed a horse. She's dead of course (song ends immediately)

Ok I'm feeling the need to weight in here.
First of all, it's NSW, they deserve it. (joke, I'm a melbourne boy).

Secondly, while those of us in the city are not watering our fucking potplants the bloody farmers are often using OPEN DITCH irrigation with a total water loss of around 90 fucking percent.

The only reason nothing is done about it because the fucking electoral regions give a stupid amount of power to the 15% of the population who don't like in major population centres. If you choose to live in buttfuck, rural victoria, don't expect world class hospitals, high speed broadband and perfect 3G coverage.

Why is that, Jag? :confused:

Because the area and location of each seat was set in another time and unsurprisingly I'm sure legislation to reduce their power in line with their percentage of the population wouldn't be that trendy. Catch-22 really.

I'm just so sick of the 'little jimmy suffered severed burning after he accidently poured petrol on himself while having a smoke and had it took an hour for an ambulance to come, in the city, it's only 40 minutes! O

Or that fairly recent case where a family where the mother was blind and the son suffered from a severe type of asthema moved to an extremely remote location. Their phone line went down, it took telstra 5 days or so to fix it, in the meantime, the kid had a severe asthma attack and died. They tried an action against optus coz their mobiel was out of range. If you're blind and have a son with a severe medical condition and you choose to move to the middle of fucking nowhere you deserve what you get.

Are the phone and medical services state run, monopolies or free market services provided by supply/demand constraints?
The "electoral regions" have equal say in the government, regardless of the population in them?
Any of you other Strines have 2 cents to add?:)

The vast majority of health infrastructure is public, there are some private hospitals. Telstra is 51% owned by the government and owns the existing copper network, it must provide competitors access to this network to varying degrees in different ways. Optus, now owned by Singtel has a cable network in most major cities that it also provides phone services over. There are 4 major competing mobile networks.

Yes on the electoral power.

But don't, for one second point to the american model of privatization as the answer to these problems. I find your health system morally reprehensible at best and your mess of a utility system a joke. I've firsthand witnessed privatization and attempts there of in various countries over time and seen nothing but increased costs and declining services, often with little or no government saving and on occasion, increased governmental costs. Putting essential infrastructure in the hands of private enterprise neither has any real benefits for the consumer and gives companies little or no motivation to upgrade or improve infrastructure. It's a fundamentally flawed idea with little or no merit.

Calm down, Jag. I wasn't setting you up, just curious.:)

Now you can answer the question WHY you swallowed the fly...

I don't know why I swallowed the fly, perhaps I'll die.:band:

Christ Almighty, I am NOT looking forward to that! It was bad enough when they came 17 years ago, and now (being more bug-a-phobic more than ever), I just want to lock myself indoors until they are gone...ha! :worried:

We get them over here in Sydney, honestly how big can they get?

You have 17-year cicadas in Australia? I thought they were a North American thing. The issue isn't so much the size (though that's a big part of it), as the number. Essentially, we're about to get a swarm of cicadas on a similar scale as the locust swarm in the picture.

Mostly it's the hideous noise.

Cricket overpowers locusts.:)