CROPS DEVASTATED

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1931, Page 16

CROPS DEVASTATED

KENYA COLONY EXPERIENCE. FIFTY MLLES OF LOCUSTS. The devastation caused by bug© swarms of locusts in Kenya, East Africa is described by an Auckland resident there in a letter to her mother. One colossal swarm was estimated as a mile wide and 50 miles in length. On beptember 13 the wheat fields were nice and green —a glorious sight. On the following days they were mostly brown patches of earth. u j I wish, says the writer, I could describe this morning’s Hades adequately. When I looked from the bedroom window I could see myriads- of silver flashing wings rising from the ground like silver snow rising, not fallings Then the backorotind to the silver flashes became a dark brown cloud blotting out the coun-

tryside. The smoke and noise increased. It is really one’s idea of hell to see natives rushing out in the murk, screaming, yelling and dancing about and beating cans. Horrible! Well, the hens enjoyed catching the beasties as some flew dangerously low in the runs (the natives also eat them). The big crane birds that accompany a swarm (they feed on them) were really beautiful sweeping about, their black and white wings and coloured beaks and legs were quite dazzling in the sunshine. The roar of their billions and billions of wings reminded me of the roar of the Huka Falls, and just as I feel that if I watched those falls for too long I would go mad and throw myself in, so I thought this morning if one had to live in a locust swarm foi- a while one would get crazed. Not only are there those billions of wings but each one casts its shadow on the ground as well, making even the earth seem tremulous. The swarm seemed never ending, brown clouds and clouds of them roll-

ing up all the time between 7 and 11.30 a.m. One wonders where they all come from. The whir of these (one cannot find a word big enough to describe the millions and hundreds of millions of them) myriads of wings still rings in our ears like the roai* of rushing water, a hurricane of wind, or sea on a rough day. Now it is all so peaceful and beautiful again so long as one does nbt look at. the devastated shamba. The garden was untouched almost this time. ■They ate the grass lawns, which so saves cutting it. The writer finishes her description on September 15 as follows: “We had another fiendish day of locusts in every direction, those of yesterday joining with another swarm from another direction, and they have finished the odd leaf left from yesterday’s efforts. The maize is just stalks with cobs hanging to them, and in some cases they have eaten the cob too, and eaten off the tips to two or three inches at the end, so we will reap very little of this. All our neighbours have suffered minor injuries to-day, but they seem to make this their Clapham Junction,