MOBILE, Alabama -- It’s high summer, and a creeping wave of
lubbers is marching across the land eating everything in sight.
Present in seemingly uncountable numbers, the annual appearance
of swarms of giant grasshopper relatives in the Mobile-Tensaw
Delta and along the edges of the Causeway each August brings to
mind biblical accounts of locust plagues. Hatching out in March
or early April, millions of lubbers gorge themselves for months
on spring’s fresh greenery. By the heat of the summer, they have
grown exponentially, from the size of a grain of rice to
monsters nearly 4 inches long. Around Mobile, lubbers tend to be
a glossy black, with distinctive red or yellow piping running
along the legs, head, and abdomen. In a neat trick of nature,
the adults are believed to focus their diets on certain plants
that render their plump bodies poisonous to predators. “You
wonder why are they black if they are sitting on green
vegetation all the time,” said John McCreadie, a University of
South Alabama entomologist, di