DOES YOUR LUNCH MAKE NOISE?
JUST BE SURE IT DOESN’T BITE!
I
CICADAS COME IN A VARIETY OF COLORS????
t is true that pretty much every group in the world eats bugs—or used to. They are considered a delicacy in many cultures. There has been a lot of natter on television about this being the year of the cicada—that they only come out once every seventeen years. That’s what they say. Given that local Natives traditionally enjoyed them, that seems like a rather long time to wait between snacks. Many years ago I was in Prescott, Arizona, during a huge swarm. The noise made by millions of cicadas actually hurts. They seemed to have gathered around the courthouse for some reason. That screeching really is painful to the ear. I knew that most Southwestern tribes used to eat the noisy little buggers and Prescott gave me the push to do some not particularly scientific research. For the record, cicadas are burrowing bugs that can grow three inches long. A Zuni friend of mine told me her grandma would have her pick them up when they appeared. The method was pretty simple—find their holes, stick a large blade of grass down there and pull out a
JERUSALEM CRICKET
snack. The simplest way to prepare them was just to toast them in a frying pan. Still doesn’t seem like seventeen years passes between snacks. No, they are not called keekeedahs. I used to be something of an authority on mountain men, even dressing in skins and camping out. All strictly traditional. So I knew about the adventures of Jedediah Smith, first man to enter the Great Basin, 1826. That includes most of Nevada and parts of neighboring states. No rivers run out of that territory. Native tribes in the Basin are mostly of Shoshone stock—Paiute, Goshute, etc. These days they all go by Shoshoni. It seemed out of character for Smith to disdainfully call the Shoshoni, Diggers. Hey, roots are good. Then, for years, people tried to figure out which group he was referring to. It is true they didn’t wear much body covering (nice way of saying naked). They had little material culture or housing like other tribes. But it was their diet that drew his greatest disdain. Jed Smith told the world they ate grasshopper stew. They also ate tons—literally—of pinion seeds. The Nevada pine nut is much larger than the local variety. Somehow “grasshopper stew” became the catch phrase for things primitive, with obvious negativity. Actually quite a number of folks eat grasshoppers. People treat locusts and grasshoppers as two different things, though they are the same bug. When the per-acre density of crickets or grasshoppers passes a certain point they morph, and grasshoppers turn into locusts that really chow down. I swear locusts have bigger teeth. According to the Mormons they are a great delicacy for seagulls. I don’t know about crickets, but I have seen one of those birds (in a hayfield) swallow mice until it was unable to fly. There is a cricket called the Mormon cricket and it is distinctly colored. Weirdly, these are katydids and not true crickets. Are they only found in Utah? In 1848 a huge swarm of them stripped the valley of vegetation
