“Dad, what kind of bug is this?”
Normally, I try not to get distracted when going up as steep an incline as the Wellsville Mountains—stopping and starting again is as much work as slowly plodding on—but, I decided that a side quest to look at a bug might give me an excuse for a much-needed breather. Besides, I probably did the same when my dad took my siblings and me with him on hikes up the Wellsvilles when we were little. He sure loved those mountains, and the long hike gave him an excuse to dispense little morsels of life wisdom along the way.
When I approached the spot the kids were huddled, I was expecting to supply some wisdom myself on this bug.
A second later, I stood perplexed. I was looking at an insect I had never seen before. The bug was the size of my thumb and shifted awkwardly in what little dirt could be found just below the bare ridge of the Wellsvilles. Its dark abdomen was covered in scaled layers that became light on the edges, making it look something like the stripes of a bee. Unlike a bee, it had no stinger or wings. Its head was the size of a small cherry, with the color similar—an off-red or even orange. The six yellow, almost translucent, legs were hefty enough to support the massive body.
The kids repeated their question. My first instinct, thanks to the tones of red and orange and never seeing anything like it before, made me want to quip that it was clearly from Mars. I checked myself when thinking how this comment would compare to the boundless wisdom of my dad. In a moment of rare restraint, I told them that I had no idea and would have to research it. I snapped a photo, and we continued our march.
After surviving the Wellsvilles, I searched and discovered that we had observed a Jerusalem Cricket. Information on these insects is almost as scarce as a cricket sighting itself, so I decided to talk to someone with more experience.
Doctor James Pitt, an entomologist at Utah State who studies mathematical population models of various insect species, assured me that not only is the Jerusalem Cricket not from Jerusalem, it’s not even a cricket. Maybe my Martian bug idea was not too far off!
And while I thought its large and exotic, bee-like appearance signified danger, Dr. Pitt said that it was probably harmless unless provoked into a bite. I gathered from him that it was not prone to the large scale booms and busts of other locust-type insects—it was not even of the same family as those swarming pests. Instead, this is a bug that lives fairly solitary life cycles, mainly staying underground and only coming up occasionally. It seems as though our daytime sighting, and up in this high mountain environment of rocks and little vegetation, was somewhat rare. How did that cricket end up in such a place?
I decided to keep researching. Facts about females cannibalizing the males after mating or being known for feeding on potatoes did little to explain its presence on this high point (unless we were looking at a male determined to live a hermit-like bachelor life?). Besides, there were no potatoes on the Wellsvilles, and even the potato farmers I talked to were just as curious about this insect as I was. Chalk up another tally for Martian origins!
Still, I was not ready to give up. The more I learned, the more clear it was that, as foreign as the Jerusalem Cricket was to our modern heritage, some cultures with deeper roots in the region are much more familiar with it. Native Americans, ranging from the Yuma to the Navajo to the Hopi all included legends associated with the Jerusalem Cricket. I realized that my ignorance of them might have had more to do with what one article mentioned: urban development and roads tend to hamper these soil-burrowing and wingless bugs more than other, more mobile insects, limiting their range and visibility to people like us.
Thinking back to the moment my kids and I crowded around the Jerusalem Cricket, I started to feel as if the alien nature of this close encounter had more to do with us than the cricket. Perhaps we had something to learn from this subtle but persevering veteran of the West.
While learning about the Jerusalem Cricket helped provide me with this important perspective, it still did not reveal the mystery of what this particular cricket was doing way up on the Wellsville Mountain Range.
I just about gave up on making sense of the cricket’s location—hadn’t I learned enough by now? However, I thought I would read one more academic work before wrapping up. I discovered that the Hopi created figurines and masks of the Jerusalem Cricket for rituals, and they equated it with certain human-like traits. To them, the cricket represented human runners or racers, particularly over long distances. This was more in relation to their ceremonies, since Jerusalem Crickets barely achieve more than a crawl at the best of times, but the comparison stuck out strongly to me.
My mind went back to the Wellsvilles Ridge. I remembered that, when I was still very young, my dad participated in a Wellsville Ridge Race—a long distance run that went from one end of the Wellsvilles to the other. He would later go on to be the Cross Country Coach at Utah State for decades and just before he passed away over ten years ago, Utah State named their distance course after him and my mom: The Steve & Dona Reeder Cross Country Course. He is a distance running icon.
What was the Jerusalem Cricket doing up there? Something in me now thinks that perhaps the Wellsvilles are a place where distance runners go to dispense wisdom and perspective. I am glad that on the high slopes of the Wellsville Mountains, I got to have one of those runners give me wisdom for living life respectfully and responsibly. And I am glad to later meet another “runner” that offered perspective on the long legacy and hardy endurance of the wildlife that surrounds us.
I am Marty Reeder and my kids and I, and I’d like to think my dad, are all Wild About Utah.
Credits:
Image: Courtesy and Copyright Marty Reeder, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy and Copyright Anderson, Howe, and Wakeman
Text: Marty Reeder, https://skyview.ccsdut.org/
Additional Reading: Marty Reeder and Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading
Wild About Utah Pieces by Marty Reeder
Stoffolano, John G., Jr., and Barton Wright. “Sösööpa—Jerusalem Cricket: An Important Insect in the Hopi Katsina Pantheon.” American Entomologist 51, no. 3 (2005): 174–79. https://doi.org/10.1093/ae/51.3.174.
Strand, Holly. “Cricket or Cootie?” Wild About Utah. October 17, 2013. https://wildaboututah.org/cricket-or-cootie/.
Weissman, David B., Amy G. Vandergast, and Norihiro Ueshima. “Jerusalem Crickets (Orthoptera: Stenopelmatidae).” In Encyclopedia of Entomology, edited by John L. Capinera, 2nd ed., 2054–61. Dordrecht: Springer, 2008. https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Entomology-Set-John-Capinera/dp/1402062427/
Weissman, David B. “JERUSALEM! CRICKET? (Orthoptera: Stenopelmatidae: Stenopelmatus); Origins of a Common Name.” American Entomologist 51, no. 3 (2005): 138–139. https://doi.org/10.1093/ae/51.3.138.
