BIBLICAL

Locusts Descend on Unsuspecting Vacationers in Tourist Hotspot

The short-horned grasshoppers are more dangerous than they look.

Millions of locusts disrupted tourists’ vacations as they came down in near-biblical proportions in Spain’s Canary Islands. Authorities have issued a warning to visitors to ”stay calm” as the pests threaten to devastate agriculture on the four Spanish Islands of Lanzarote, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, and Fuerteventura. Videos show fearsome insect swarms creating massive shadows at normally sunny tourist sites. While officials currently believe the swarm will not turn into a plague, locusts become most destructive when food is scarce. A swarm of 80 million locusts is able to devour the food of 35,000 humans, as they did in 1958, destroying Tenerife’s tomato and potato crops for the season. “The next two days are going to be key,” Francisco Fabelo, who oversees the Environment of the Islands, told the Daily Mail. If they are adult specimens, they may die, but if “we see copulations, that would mean that they are reproducing,” he added. Swarms originating in Africa and carried to the islands by easterly winds are not uncommon, and some experts believe the current invasion will follow the familiar pattern of burning out on its own. “Nature itself takes its course, and many times they end up being preyed upon by birds,” Theo Hernando, secretary general of the Association of Farmers and Ranchers of the Canary Islands, said.