Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers--best way to kill 'em all

Here in the Southeast, we have a gawd-awful HUGE grasshopper called the Eastern Lubber.



They're poisonous, so they have very few predators to keep them in check. Killing them in a safe way is nigh impossible. You can step on them when they're too big and fat to hop away, but by then they've decimated the garden.

Quick life cycle lesson on these demons--the mother lays her eggs inside the soil in late summer/fall. The eggs overwinter in the soil, and the young emerge out of the ground in droves. It's gross. And of course, you can rest assured the mama laid her eggs right in the middle of your best ever cucumber patch. Which means her babies are right there ready to feast on your lovely transplants the minute they emerge.

However, I found a non-chemical way to kill these beasts--a propane torch! Yes, you kill off your best cukes, but hey...those vermin gotta go!!! I have other transplants ready to take their place.

Ya gotta burn those little suckers the very minute you see them coming out of the ground. But you'll see them, because they come out in droves...like a plague. Burn 'em to stop the life cycle. It might take a few sessions of stalking your property with that propane torch, but in a few weeks, your grasshopper population will be much lower.

And you didn't use poisons to get rid of them. And you got to play with a flame thrower!

I hear you. I believe in live and let live -- but I also believe that is a two-way contract. Sometimes the munchies want to take over and destroy everthing I've worked for, and I won't have it. I have the right to defend my food, like any other living creature. So if a propane torch is the necessary tool, I say fire it up. My 2c.

I have the Southeastern Lubber. I am not sure, though mine may be larger than your lubbers.

I find them fun because they are so fat I call them Jabba the Hutt

I have heard that in some places kids like to play with them, using them to pull chariots.

I don't have kids so I just step on them because they are too fat to run away.

Mine have much prettier colors than your lubbers. Pretty pinks and pretty greens.

That thread has some preventive measures like having guinea hens, encouraging predation by wild birds and domestic poultry. You can try by providing a moist, grassy spot far from the garden as alternative habitat. Using them for fishing bait, etc.

My understanding is that they are not toxic to humans only predators.

As a wise man once sang:

When you were young and your heart
Was an open book
You used to say live and let live
(You know you did, you know you did)
(You know you did)
But if this ever changing world
In which we're living
Makes you give in and cry
Say live and let die
-Sir Paul McCartney

-CK

they sure sound like a low-cost high-protein chicken feed supplement!

greg mosser wrote:they sure sound like a low-cost high-protein chicken feed supplement!

All except for the "toxic" part.

I have read that chickens will not eat the lubbers, even though they love regular grasshoppers.