Arlington woman
takes on Mormon
Cricket
Super volunteer does Animal
Planet segment about Arlington
infestation
50¢
VOL. 140
NO. 35
8 Pages
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Morrow County, Heppner, Oregon
Find ‘em and spray ‘em is battle plan
against Mormon Crickets
Meeting lays out game plan to fight advancing infestation
By David Sykes
Money for spraying,
and volunteers for finding
and mapping their loca-
tions, is the battle plan to
fight the incoming infesta-
tion of Mormon Crickets,
officials said at a meeting
last week in Ione.
Extension agents Larry
Lutcher from Morrow and
Jordan Maley from Gilliam
Counties, along with ento-
mologist Todd Adams from
the Oregon Department of
Agriculture in Hermiston,
all said there is no time to
waste if Morrow County
wants to control the crick-
ets now moving east from
Gilliam County, where they
have been dealing with
a major infestation since
2017.
“I have had ten to fif-
teen calls this week from
producers who are work-
ing in the fields who have
seen the crickets,” Lutcher
told the crowd of farmers,
ranchers and others gath-
ered at the Ione Park last
Thursday evening for a
special Mormon Cricket
meeting. Lutcher says the
crickets have been report-
ed along Ione Gooseberry
Road, in several locations
on Juniper Canyon, one
mile north of the Lexington
Grange, and on rangeland
on Hinton Creek just east of
Heppner. “They are here,”
he emphasized.
The meeting was called
by Lutcher to map out a
strategy for keeping the in-
festation under control. The
two things needed most are
money and knowing where
the infestations are located.
Volunteers can help with
finding them, and money
from federal, state and local
sources is being sought to
pay for the spraying once
the “hot spots” are iden-
tified.
The Mormon Crickets
have been a big problem in
Gilliam County since 2017
when they came off range-
land in Ladd and Blalock
Canyons and moved not
only into farm and range
ground, but also into the
city of Arlington. “I lived
through that, and no one
should have to experience
it,” said April Aamodt of
Arlington who self-educat-
ed herself and is a volun-
teer expert on the Mormon
Cricket (see related story).
The crickets not only
took over the city of Ar-
lington, but also began
doing extensive damage
to agricultural land, re-
portedly taking out ten
percent of one large Gilliam
wheat farmer’s crop. Mor-
row County officials don’t
want that happening here,
Todd Adams, Entomologist (left) with the Oregon Dept of Ag-
riculture in Hermiston, explains the life cycle of the Mormon
Cricket at a meeting last week in Ione. With him is Morrow
County Extension Agent Larry Lutcher and Morrow County
Commissioner Jim Doherty. -Photo by David Sykes.
so Lutcher has enlisted the
help of Maley and others
to lay out a game plan to
fight them.
The first step is for
county residents to under-
stand the Mormon Cricket.
The insect has seven stages
of development, Adams
explained. Mating and egg
laying under the earth by
females is in the summer,
with the eggs dormant over
the winter. In early spring
around the middle of March
when soil temperatures
reach 40 degrees they begin
to hatch. In the early devel-
opment stages, the crickets
begin moving locally look-
ing for food, then later band
together and migrate over
large distances.
“They are less than a
half-inch in the first young
stage, and they hard to see,”
Adams said. He said when
first spotted it can look to
observers “like the ground
is moving.” Adams says
the crickets can move a
half mile per day and go 50
miles in a season. “When
they are moving, they are
banding in the adult stage
and mating and looking for
where to lay their eggs.”
He said the females will
lay 85 -100 eggs each in
seven-day intervals. “They
will lay eggs, move on lay
more eggs, move again and
lay more. The following
spring when the tempera-
ture reaches 40 degrees,
they hatch out of the ground
and feed on forage,” Adams
said.
The best time to kill
the crickets, experts say,
is after they hatch but be-
fore they reach adulthood.
The chemical of choice
is Dimilin which keeps
the young insects from
molting their skin which
kills them. “They put an
oil in with chemical and
it hits the plant, sticks to
it, then the cricket comes
along and eats it,” Adams
explained. He also said it
isn’t necessary to treat ev-
ery acre for spraying to be
effective. With a 1,000-acre
tract you can treat 500 and
as they move through, they
will eat and if they are not
in a sprayed area they will
eventually make it into a
treated area. That way you
use half the chemical and
treat half the area,” he said.
Adams said Dimilin will
stay on plants for a week
or two and can handle rain,
just not flood irrigation. The
spray is fine for livestock
and only targets insects. It
can be sprayed on range-
land and cows and sheep
can eat it, but it cannot be
sprayed on crop land. Once
they reach adulthood then a
bait poison like Sevin must
be used, which is not as
environmentally friendly
or effective, he pointed out.
Maley is familiar with
the cost of spraying as Gil-
liam County has been doing
it for a number of years. He
said the cost is around $2.80
an acre for chemicals and
$6 for aerial application. He
said it can be applied on the
ground with a side by side
“relatively cheap.” Maley
says the best thing Morrow
County can do is try and se-
cure chemical now because
there may be problems in
the supply chain for agri-
cultural chemicals. He said
Gilliam bought 3,000 lbs.
of bait and enough Dimilin
to do 12,000 acres. “Other-
wise, you could end up in
the spring not getting the
chemical.” He said it was
important to get bait also
because in Morrow Coun-
ty people aren’t going to
know they have the crickets
for a while, and “all of a
sudden they (the crickets)
are adults, and the spray
doesn’t work.” Lutcher said
the best thing we can do in
Morrow County with the
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new infestations coming in
is to kill them when they
are young since once they
are adults you have to bait
because they weren’t found
when they were young.
Gilliam County has
been working with Lex-
ington sprayer John Boyer
for several years now on
its spraying program, and
Maley says he has been do-
ing a great job. Boyer said
he will bring in additional
pilots if needed to handle
the spraying once it gets
going in Morrow County.
County Commissioner Jim
Doherty said he is working
on several funding sources
including federal, state and
local to pay for a spraying
program in the county.
But Doherty and the
other officials admit Mor-
row faces different prob-
lems than Gilliam County in
starting a spraying program.
Here we have several large
landowners such as the
55,000-acre Navy bomb-
ing range in the middle of
the county, the Bureau of
Land Management owning
land in the county as well
as a large parcel owned by
the Nature Conservatory
which adheres to a natu-
ral land use policy of no
chemicals. There are also
many irrigated crop circles
in north county, some of
them organic which cannot
use chemicals.
At the end of the meet-
ing, officials said action
must be taken soon to pre-
pare to fight the coming
cricket infestation. “Next
spring we’re going to have
to be geared up and ready
to do something,” said
Doherty, who has been
heading up the county com-
mission efforts on the prob-
lem. Maley urged everyone
at the meeting to enter con-
tact information on a signup
sheet he passed around,
saying he will call another
meeting in December to
work more on plans to fight
the cricket, and he urged
people in Morrow County
to be on the lookout for
them. There will soon be a
system set up for reporting
infestations so spraying
can be planned. He said if
crickets are spotted for peo-
ple to first make sure they
have geo locating turned
on their phone, then take a
picture and send it to him
with a text of where they are
located. That information
will be put on a map and
become part of the manage-
ment area.
April Aamodt (left) with her sister Penny Krebs holds poster
of the Mormon Cricket.
By David Sykes
An Arlington woman
got so disgusted with the
Mormon Cricket infestation
there, that she voluntarily
took on a fight that land-
ed her spot on an Animal
Planet TV special about the
insects.
Aamodt said the crick-
ets invaded Arlington in
2017 and “they were every-
where. It was disgusting.”
She tells the story of what
tipped her over the edge
and made her start fighting
the crickets. “I had a pickup
and I had just hauled some
pigs with some carrots in
the back. I washed out the
truck and those crickets
came in. I turned my back
for about 30 seconds turned
back around and those car-
rots were gone, that is how
fast they can eat some-
thing,” she relates.
Since then, Aamodt,
who has a day job as she
puts it with the Gilliam
County District Attorney’s
office, has become some-
what of an expert on the
cricket. She has self-taught
herself not only about the
insect’s life cycle, but also
different ways to kill them.
“We did a study and
put some of them in an
aquarium. They like spin-
ach, and corn on the cob is
gone in seconds,” she says.
Attending a recent meeting
in Ione about how to fight
the crickets (see related sto-
ry), Aamodt was praised by
Gilliam County Extension
Agent Jordan Maley for
the volunteer work she has
done. “If you have people
like April who are willing
to deal with this, it is going
to help a lot because April
has given us a capacity
we would not have,” Ma-
ley said in urging Morrow
County people to volunteer
in locating the insects. “I
would say we have fifty per-
cent more capacity than we
would have without April.
If you can find people like
April or several, it’s going
to take several because she
is a ball of fire,” he said in
encouraging volunteers.
Aamodt’s self-taught
knowledge about the crick-
et landed her a spot on the
TV show Animal Planet,
Intruders. “This six-part
series reveals real-life sto-
ries of homeowners fight-
ing back to reclaim their
-See ARLINGTON WOMAN/
PAGE TWO
The April Aamodt photo (above) that went viral and got her
on Animal Planet