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The Miracle of the Gulls: A Cricket War · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super
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Speaker 1: producer Max Williams. I'm Ben Boland. I want to give
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Speaker 1: a special thank you at the top of today's show
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Speaker 1: to my one and only co host, Mr Noel Brown. Noel,
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Speaker 1: I've got you in my front in the front of
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Speaker 1: my mind here because just from the title, I think
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Speaker 1: a lot of long time listeners are going to know
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Speaker 1: why this this is a hard one for you. Are
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Speaker 1: we doing last named Now that's a new addition. I
1:02
Speaker 1: don't think I knew you had a last name. You've
1:04
Speaker 1: just been to me, right right. I use it use
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Speaker 1: a lot of personas, but figured we could we could
1:09
Speaker 1: go a little more formal, you know, like now that
1:12
Speaker 1: we're spinning out more ridiculous shows, you know what I mean,
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Speaker 1: what if there's another Knoll or Ben on one of
1:18
Speaker 1: those shows? Yeah, I mean, then if it's like if
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Speaker 1: there's another Noel Brown or Ben Bull and then we
1:22
Speaker 1: gotta start rocking middle names. And I don't think you
1:24
Speaker 1: want to reveal your middle name. I don't even want
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Speaker 1: to talk about mine, so God forbid that ever happened.
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Speaker 1: But it's true, Ben I am I do you know. Look,
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Speaker 1: let me be real, I'm not as scared of birds
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Speaker 1: as I make it out to be. And like if
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Speaker 1: I wouldn't want one to like come at me, you know,
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Speaker 1: that would freak me out. But I'm not like gonna
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Speaker 1: run if I see a bird, you know, like in
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Speaker 1: a park or something like that. But I do have
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Speaker 1: this theory that my fear of birds stems from an
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Speaker 1: unfortunate encounter with seagulls when I was a young child.
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Speaker 1: My Grandpapa would take me to the beach and you know,
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Speaker 1: feed the gulls as you do. And I just have
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Speaker 1: this like kind a traumatic memory of being swarmed upon
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Speaker 1: by goals, possibly California goals. Who's to say, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: And you know, those moments in childhood often can be
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Speaker 1: some of the most impactful memories we've ever had. I
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Speaker 1: found out the hard way that some birds in their
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Speaker 1: bills have something very much like teeth when I was
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Speaker 1: a child actor in Nashville's opry Land Amusement Park and
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Speaker 1: got attacked by some of the birds there, which all
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Speaker 1: the adults thought was hilarious. I still have a scar
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Speaker 1: on my finger from it. I love that you mentioned
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Speaker 1: the California Goal because the California Goal is the subject
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Speaker 1: of today's episode, The Miracle of the Goals. If you
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Speaker 1: are a fan of state level trivia, then you may
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Speaker 1: have run across this kind of weird fact before. Like
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Speaker 1: other states, Utah has an official state bird. That official
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Speaker 1: state bird, however, is the one and only California Goal.
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Speaker 1: So first question, why on earth would a state adopt
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Speaker 1: a bird with another state's name on it. It's a
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Speaker 1: great question, man. But also I just want to acknowledge
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Speaker 1: this is our Utah episode. We never have to talk
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Speaker 1: about Utah again. This is this is our Utah episode. Um.
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Speaker 1: It's true though, but there's a real There's a reason
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Speaker 1: why the California Goal is the state bird of Utah,
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Speaker 1: and that is because of Mormon settlers. We know that
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Speaker 1: Utah has a big, you know, history and tradition in
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Speaker 1: the Mormon faith, and Mormons are who settled Utah, and
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Speaker 1: they had a rough go of it. In eight there
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Speaker 1: was a frost in the month of April that was
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Speaker 1: going to wipe out all of their crops and leave them,
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Speaker 1: you know, potentially to starve and freeze. And if that
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Speaker 1: wasn't enough, they essentially had like a biblical plague like
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Speaker 1: swarm of crickets that descended upon their fields, also threatening
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Speaker 1: to wipe out their crops, and you know, leave that
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Speaker 1: to starve and freeze. But here's the thing. The crickets,
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Speaker 1: which are actually part of the katie did family, they
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Speaker 1: can't fly. They just hop, you know, they hop from
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Speaker 1: from plant to plant to devour everything in sight. When
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Speaker 1: you have a swarm of these things, it is quite
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Speaker 1: a formidable thing to behold. And they just didn't know
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Speaker 1: what to do. They didn't have like pesticides at the time.
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Speaker 1: They just could like crush them. But here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: These and insects are cannibalistic, so when you crush them,
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Speaker 1: it's like, oh, more yummy things to eat, and they
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Speaker 1: start eating the carcasses of their fallen comrades, which just
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Speaker 1: brings on more of these swarming insects. And contemporary reports
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Speaker 1: journals at the time recalled settlers resorting to eating wild
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Speaker 1: game and eating wolves to survive. But then we could
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Speaker 1: get like a hopeful music cue of some sort max perfect. Then,
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Speaker 1: according to the tail, thousands of goals came to the rescue.
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Speaker 1: They came to the rescue the way like the eagles
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Speaker 1: come in Lord of the Rings, the Battle of Five Armies.
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Speaker 1: They descended upon the fields they began eating all these crickets.
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Speaker 1: According to the legend, the goals even had to stop
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Speaker 1: to huke up the crickets and then go back and
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Speaker 1: eat some more. And they eventually ate so many that
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Speaker 1: this ni unstoppable force backed off, and the late arrival
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Speaker 1: of these birds not only saved the crops, but in
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Speaker 1: doing so ensured the survival of thousands of settlers. This
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Speaker 1: this was called the Miracle of the Goals, and in
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Speaker 1: nineteen a monument de picking two big metal bronze seagulls
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Speaker 1: perched the top of granite column was erected in Salt
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Speaker 1: Lake Cities Temple Square. I've actually seen this the last time.
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Speaker 1: I was in uh Salt Lake City, which is a
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Speaker 1: beautiful place with a lot of a lot of striking
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Speaker 1: arc texture. Right, so this big bird statue didn't stand
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Speaker 1: out as much as it might in another city. But
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Speaker 1: that's that's the reason that the California goal has been
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Speaker 1: adopted as Utah's state bird. But today's episode is about
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Speaker 1: the questions regarding the accuracy of this, the legend of
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Speaker 1: the Miracle of goals, or the so called cricket War.
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Speaker 1: How true is the story. It's a good question, Ben,
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Speaker 1: and to answer that, we should travel back to eight
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Speaker 1: after the Mormons had successfully made it through a brutal winter,
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Speaker 1: their first winter in the Salt Lake Valley where they
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Speaker 1: had settled. And you know, this is a very tough
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Speaker 1: group of of settlers. They knew how to work the land,
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Speaker 1: and they knew how to deal with the elements, but
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Speaker 1: this one was particularly nasty. And the previous autumn they
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Speaker 1: had laid the seeds for a grain crop that they
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Speaker 1: were hoping to enjoy in the following spring. It looked
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Speaker 1: like it was all going to go their way. All
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Speaker 1: of their best laid plans were going to come to fruition,
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Speaker 1: and they were gonna have a ton of grain on
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Speaker 1: their hands. But they essentially began to endure like the
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Speaker 1: tortures of the damned, you know, some job like biblical problems.
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Speaker 1: They came two fold. Right, First, this deadly frost that
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Speaker 1: we talked about, and then that's, you know, depending on
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Speaker 1: the source insatiable horde of these insects, these crickets, and
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Speaker 1: we do have quite a few accounts of this, one
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Speaker 1: from Mrs Lorenzo dow Young, who wrote, of this period,
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Speaker 1: we have grappled with the frost. But today, to our
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Speaker 1: utter astonishment, the crickets came by millions, sweeping everything before them.
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Speaker 1: They first attacked a patch of beans for us, and
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Speaker 1: in twenty minutes there was not a vestige of them
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Speaker 1: to be seen. They next sweep over piece, then came
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Speaker 1: into our garden, took everything and clean. We went out
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Speaker 1: with brush and undertook to drive them, but they were
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Speaker 1: too strong for us. And I want to come in here.
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Speaker 1: I want to step back for a moment to make
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Speaker 1: really important point with some of these sources that we're
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Speaker 1: using for today's show. We have members of the Church
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Speaker 1: of Latter Day Saints in the audience today, and if
8:22
Speaker 1: I understand correctly, the current preferred term is not Mormon.
8:27
Speaker 1: It is l d S where Latter Day Saints. So
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Speaker 1: we do realize that on the show, and we of
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Speaker 1: course respect the choice of terms that are preferred for
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Speaker 1: the accuracy of these accounts from these experts. We are
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Speaker 1: using their words when we when we use the phrase Mormon,
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Speaker 1: and mean no offense by that. So back to some
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Speaker 1: of these quotes I'll read too much shorter ones another
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Speaker 1: person in the time from these contemporary journals, Eliza R.
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Speaker 1: Snow says, the morning's frost, in unison with the ravages
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Speaker 1: of the crickets for a few days past, produces many
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Speaker 1: size and occasionally some long faces. And that's because Snow
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Speaker 1: at the time, like many people, doesn't realize how dire
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Speaker 1: this situation will become. And then a guy named Isaac
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Speaker 1: Hate is a little more cognizant. I think of the
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Speaker 1: trouble on the horizon, both in terms of literal crickets
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Speaker 1: and in terms of the future of the colony. And
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Speaker 1: he says crops began to suffer for want of rain.
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Speaker 1: It's quite cold and very dry. Crickets destroyed some crops
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Speaker 1: and are eating the heads off the grain as soon
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Speaker 1: as it heads out, meaning when it breaks through the soil.
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Speaker 1: And says the prospects for grain are discouraging. That's right,
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Speaker 1: and that Susan Young Gates wrote in a biography of
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Speaker 1: her father, Brigham Young, who was the second President of
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Speaker 1: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, came
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Speaker 1: out in ninety wrote of the kind of tribulations they
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Speaker 1: experienced in this way. Just as the crops were giving
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Speaker 1: promise of a much needed harvest, swarms of crickets hovered
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Speaker 1: over the plowed lands like a devastating army, darkening the
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Speaker 1: earth for miles around, eating off every blade of grass
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Speaker 1: and every growing thing. Again really terrifying and and and
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Speaker 1: a lot of this language does have that kind of
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Speaker 1: you know, biblical kind of weight to itu, which which
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Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. It's kind of funny too
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Speaker 1: when you think of crickets like as uh, you know
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Speaker 1: the sound you hear when like a joke doesn't land.
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Speaker 1: This is a much different sound. This would have been
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Speaker 1: like an absolute just cacophony of buzzing and you know,
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Speaker 1: just crunching and really really scary stuff hittering. Sustress. I do,
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Speaker 1: I do have to tell you that one of my
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Speaker 1: first questions in the research for this was the following,
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Speaker 1: as a guy who is eating crickets in the past,
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Speaker 1: you know, I'm not alone here. They are a food
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Speaker 1: source like the rich in protein other people, the original
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Speaker 1: residents of this part of the world, I had probably
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Speaker 1: eaten them in the past, right, Like, wait, nol Max,
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Speaker 1: have you guys? I just want I'm very curious. Have
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Speaker 1: you guys ever eaten crickets. No, I have not, but
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Speaker 1: I would try it. I would definitely do it. I
11:24
Speaker 1: just have never been in the opportunity where someone's like,
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Speaker 1: heyat this cricket, but yeah, I'll give it a try.
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Speaker 1: There's a really good takaria here in Atlanta called Alta Sorrow,
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Speaker 1: and they include crickets as an add on to any
11:36
Speaker 1: of their of their dishes, their tacos. I have not
11:39
Speaker 1: had them, but I know that they're very popular in
11:41
Speaker 1: Mexico and um other parts of the world, and very
11:44
Speaker 1: very common as sources of protein, like you said, and
11:47
Speaker 1: you can put a nice seasoning blend on them and
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Speaker 1: they are probably really crunchy and delicious. I'm all about it.
11:51
Speaker 1: I just like, like Max said, I haven't really been
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Speaker 1: in that situation, and that's not true. I mean, I've
11:56
Speaker 1: been to the taco place and I thought about it,
11:57
Speaker 1: but I think I decided not to. You know what,
12:00
Speaker 1: after the story, next time, I will because you gotta wonder. Bend.
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Speaker 1: You're right, the Native American population that lived in this
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Speaker 1: part of the world prior to the LDS community kind
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Speaker 1: of coming and settling would have eaten these, It absolutely
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Speaker 1: would have been a very reasonable staple food for them.
12:17
Speaker 1: Kind of right, yeah, absolutely, And now you know, I
12:20
Speaker 1: know where the three of us are gonna go hang
12:23
Speaker 1: when we will we get for our when we get
12:26
Speaker 1: together for our first in person kick at session. You're
12:29
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. No, A lot of indigenous residents, a
12:34
Speaker 1: lot of Native American foragers were not just eating crickets,
12:38
Speaker 1: but they were eating insects of one kind or another.
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Speaker 1: According to Utah archaeologist David Mattson, there is an array
12:45
Speaker 1: of ethnographic and ethno historical data on how they were
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Speaker 1: eating these insects, how they would capture them, how they
12:52
Speaker 1: would prepare them, and then how they would ultimately consume them.
12:55
Speaker 1: And what's interesting to me about this is, you know,
12:59
Speaker 1: ridiculous just Wrians. As you may or may not know,
13:01
Speaker 1: we're all based here in the South and the southern
13:05
Speaker 1: parts of the US. There is one culinary rule, which
13:08
Speaker 1: is you can fry anything. So I bet like the
13:13
Speaker 1: early LDS settlers would have been able to fry stuff.
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Speaker 1: It just it didn't seem like food to them culturally, right,
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Speaker 1: And instead they went for the wolves, which would have
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Speaker 1: probably been quite greasy and gaming. It's almost like they
13:27
Speaker 1: missed the boat on this, right, Ben. Yeah, yeah, Because
13:30
Speaker 1: the thing is, now, what they were getting was if
13:34
Speaker 1: it were not for these, uh, this cultural unfamiliarity, that
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Speaker 1: they were getting a kind of extra side dish, even
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Speaker 1: an entree. You know, Now you could have crikets with
13:45
Speaker 1: your grain and it would have been super super easy
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Speaker 1: to harvest these. Mattson has this great line where he
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Speaker 1: looks for a comparison and he says, I estimate that
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Speaker 1: if a whale fell out of the sky, you can
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Speaker 1: get more calories just eating crickets than you could cutting
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Speaker 1: up the whale, Which I think is that if that
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Speaker 1: feels like hyperbole, but at the very least it gives
14:10
Speaker 1: you a sense of just how many crickets were talking about, right.
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Speaker 1: I guess the argument is that like the crops the
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Speaker 1: crickets were devouring, possibly would have generated less sustenance than
14:21
Speaker 1: the crickets themselves if they had only kind of looked
14:23
Speaker 1: at it through a different lens and realized like, oh,
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Speaker 1: this is actually good, good be food. M hmm. I
14:28
Speaker 1: think that's a I think that's a good point, right,
14:30
Speaker 1: Because they're they're protein rich rather than carbohydrate rich, but
14:35
Speaker 1: there's another thing here. We know that LDS members at
14:38
Speaker 1: the time, We're not clueless. They knew that the native
14:44
Speaker 1: populations would forage for insects. And you can even see
14:48
Speaker 1: notes again in those journals where there are people who
14:51
Speaker 1: are saying, look, you know, the native communities here have
14:55
Speaker 1: used insects as a food source, and according to reports,
15:01
Speaker 1: some of the more desperate or I guess we could
15:04
Speaker 1: say open minded settlers would even eat a couple of
15:07
Speaker 1: bugs now and then. But they also said this was
15:11
Speaker 1: a last resort, and they felt like the crickets themselves
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Speaker 1: were vindictive little demons. Well, I mean, especially when you
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Speaker 1: read all the language you know around this and all
15:23
Speaker 1: the accounts like they did look at this as like
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Speaker 1: almost a biblical plague, and I imagine that they would
15:28
Speaker 1: they would associate uh, those crickets with some sort of
15:31
Speaker 1: malevel of force or at the very least like the
15:34
Speaker 1: hand of God, and maybe probably not a good idea
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Speaker 1: to eat them, you know, like possessed with some kind
15:39
Speaker 1: of you know, bad spirits or something like that. Um.
15:42
Speaker 1: But in May of eighteen forty eight, after this you know,
15:47
Speaker 1: epidemic of crickets, the Pioneers were severely malnourished. They were
15:52
Speaker 1: not looking so good. They were very hungry, and they
15:55
Speaker 1: were desperate to the point where they would have eaten anything.
15:59
Speaker 1: So again, it's just a shame. It feels like a
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Speaker 1: missed opportunity. But the doctor pretty meeks it was a
16:04
Speaker 1: pioneer doctor. He described the winter of forty eight for
16:09
Speaker 1: his family like this. He said, my family went several
16:12
Speaker 1: months without a satisfying meal of victuals. I went sometimes
16:15
Speaker 1: a mile up Jordan to a patch of wild roses
16:18
Speaker 1: to get the berries to eat, which I would eat
16:21
Speaker 1: as rapid a hog stems. And all I shot hawks
16:25
Speaker 1: and crows, and they eat well. I would go and
16:28
Speaker 1: search the mire holes and find cattle dead, and would
16:31
Speaker 1: fleece of what meat I could and eat it. And
16:34
Speaker 1: then he talks also about how they would eat wolf
16:37
Speaker 1: meat and uh and roots and thistles and various unpleasant
16:41
Speaker 1: you know, things that could just get out of the earth,
16:44
Speaker 1: um but not particularly tasty. And then he goes, finally,
16:47
Speaker 1: the crickets came so thick it made the earth black
16:50
Speaker 1: in places, and it did look like they would take
16:53
Speaker 1: what little we had growing, which looked nice and flourishing.
16:56
Speaker 1: Now everything looked gloomy, our provisions giving out, and the
17:00
Speaker 1: crickets eating up what little we had growing. And we
17:03
Speaker 1: a thousand miles away from supplies right right, protein, protein everywhere,
17:09
Speaker 1: but not a bite to eat, apparently, And things only
17:14
Speaker 1: only worsened as we get to what will be known
17:17
Speaker 1: as the Great Cricket War. These farmers are watching, they
17:20
Speaker 1: feel helpless and impotent as crickets devour acres and acres
17:25
Speaker 1: of not just grain, but also vegetables. And of course
17:28
Speaker 1: we can't tell this story without mentioning Brigham Young. At
17:32
Speaker 1: the time, he was leading a large group of people
17:35
Speaker 1: across the plains, and he was getting reports that some
17:39
Speaker 1: folks were considering leaving the area that would become Utah
17:42
Speaker 1: and heading out west, lighting out for the territories, going
17:45
Speaker 1: to Oregon, or California or Oregon, as I believe some
17:50
Speaker 1: people pronounce it. Other people told Young to stop letting
17:56
Speaker 1: folks migrate over there, because other people were already starving,
18:02
Speaker 1: and families were like it sounds funny today, but we
18:06
Speaker 1: have to realize this was a serious life or death situation.
18:09
Speaker 1: People were fighting back crickets with brushes with sticks, whipping
18:14
Speaker 1: at him with ropes and and no matter what they did,
18:16
Speaker 1: they could not stem this insectoid tied. There's a guy
18:21
Speaker 1: named William G. Hartley who's really interesting. He wrote about
18:25
Speaker 1: the miracle of the goals in an article called Mormons,
18:28
Speaker 1: Crickets and Goals, a new look at an old story.
18:31
Speaker 1: And he wrote this back in nineteen seventy for an
18:35
Speaker 1: historical publication called Utah Historical Quarterly. And he's the one
18:40
Speaker 1: who gives us a great example of the various tactics
18:44
Speaker 1: people tried. The LDS members of the Saints tried. When
18:48
Speaker 1: the brooms and the clubs and the sticks didn't work,
18:52
Speaker 1: they tried to drown the crickets, and then they tried
18:54
Speaker 1: to drive them into fire. And then they went into
18:58
Speaker 1: the fields with ten pay ends and bells to claim
19:01
Speaker 1: and hope that they could scare them with noise. I know,
19:04
Speaker 1: that's almost like the kind of thing you think about
19:06
Speaker 1: with other, you know, religious cultures, for example, I think
19:10
Speaker 1: Chinese New Year right where they bang on you know,
19:13
Speaker 1: to pots and pans and set off fireworks to like
19:16
Speaker 1: scare away evil spirits. This this seems to be obviously
19:19
Speaker 1: it's functional as well. But I don't know that crickets
19:21
Speaker 1: really spook easily. You know, I feel like they're kind
19:24
Speaker 1: of I have a one track mine. I'm gonna tell you, man, Yeah,
19:29
Speaker 1: I had I had pet crickets growing up. You know,
19:32
Speaker 1: I was I, I uh was an outdoors kid, so
19:36
Speaker 1: you know, i'd have like a frog in a box
19:38
Speaker 1: real like, here's my new turtle, pal and gear got
19:43
Speaker 1: years and years ago. Now, I got some crickets and
19:47
Speaker 1: I caught them in the wild because I wanted to
19:49
Speaker 1: feed them to a lizard that I also caught. But
19:52
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about the lizard, and I just
19:54
Speaker 1: thought it made sense. But then I learned about lucky crickets,
19:58
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, I'm gonna keep a few
19:59
Speaker 1: of the ease. And then one of our family friends
20:04
Speaker 1: growing up as an adult like, shook his head and said,
20:07
Speaker 1: you should just you should just let the crickets go
20:10
Speaker 1: or try to feed him to the lizard. And I
20:11
Speaker 1: said why and he said, because crickets are dumb. And
20:15
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this, knol, until I had this cricket
20:18
Speaker 1: and a little homemade to terrarium, and I had like
20:20
Speaker 1: a little I can't stress how small an amount of
20:23
Speaker 1: water this is, and the cricket managed to drown in it.
20:27
Speaker 1: It's it like popped in and just laid there and drowned,
20:31
Speaker 1: poor little guy. I'm just saying they're not They're not
20:35
Speaker 1: gonna get insectmentsa for sure. No, I got you. And
20:39
Speaker 1: crickets are you know, popular or I guess staple foods
20:42
Speaker 1: for feeding lots of pets, like uh, I believe turtles
20:47
Speaker 1: eat crickets, like you know, you buy crickets usually for
20:50
Speaker 1: the purposes of food for your for your animals. Yeah,
20:53
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. And maybe I'm unfairly maligning the intelligence
20:58
Speaker 1: of crickets because I believe they actually breathe through the
21:02
Speaker 1: sides of their bodies. Uh. Yeah, they've got what are
21:07
Speaker 1: they called spiritles on the side. So maybe maybe I
21:11
Speaker 1: was just a sadistic child, you know what I mean,
21:14
Speaker 1: maybe I could have saved I'm haunted, No, I'm haunted, budness.
21:18
Speaker 1: At least you weren't like pulling the wings off of
21:20
Speaker 1: flies or anything, right, and and at least it wasn't
21:24
Speaker 1: a horde of crickets. So we know that all these
21:29
Speaker 1: all these attempts did not work, and that's when the
21:33
Speaker 1: goals appeared to save the day. So as the pioneers
21:39
Speaker 1: are increasingly concerned about their future, you know, the future
21:44
Speaker 1: of their families, the future of their community, everything, they
21:49
Speaker 1: turned to religion and they have a three day fast
21:54
Speaker 1: and prayer. And again, you know, I love that you're
21:57
Speaker 1: pointing out sort of the spiritual and religion just mindset
22:01
Speaker 1: in which this occurs, because these are seeing as divine
22:05
Speaker 1: actions and so they you know, so it makes sense
22:10
Speaker 1: that they would turn to attempts for divine intercession, right,
22:13
Speaker 1: and they, you know, the secular things aren't working. You
22:16
Speaker 1: can't hit them with a broom, and you can't drown them,
22:19
Speaker 1: and you can't burn them. So according to Susie Young Gates,
22:24
Speaker 1: they try this three day fast prayer ritual and in
22:28
Speaker 1: their minds it absolutely works. And we're gonna get into,
22:40
Speaker 1: you know, how much did it work and how much
22:43
Speaker 1: did these goals actually save the day, because you may
22:46
Speaker 1: have noticed we are talking about and reading accounts of
22:49
Speaker 1: people saying that the crickets like devoured everything. So you
22:53
Speaker 1: have these goals swooping in and eating the crickets and
22:56
Speaker 1: getting rid of them. But by that point, sure a
23:00
Speaker 1: lot of damage already done, wasn't there. Batter, that's a
23:03
Speaker 1: very good point. Yes, no, you are correct, because the
23:08
Speaker 1: it's not as if the goals automatically came chasing the crickets. Right.
23:12
Speaker 1: These people went through some trials and tribulations, and when
23:16
Speaker 1: they are at their lowest point, when they are seriously
23:20
Speaker 1: considering the end of their community as they know it. Well,
23:25
Speaker 1: let's turn to Susie Young Gates for this. After the prayer,
23:28
Speaker 1: after the three day fest, she writes, and behold a
23:31
Speaker 1: miracle rising from the borders of the lake appeared myriad
23:35
Speaker 1: snow white gulls. From whence they came? And what was
23:38
Speaker 1: their purpose? The pioneers could not determine. Settling upon fields
23:43
Speaker 1: black with the millions of crickets, the gulls seize them
23:45
Speaker 1: and swallowed them, as if unable to fully gorge themselves
23:49
Speaker 1: when their crops will full, the birds would hop over
23:52
Speaker 1: a ditch bank or convenient hillock and disgorge themselves, then
23:56
Speaker 1: return again defeat upon the countless crickets. The people student
24:00
Speaker 1: all at this direct answer to their prayer. I mean
24:04
Speaker 1: that sounds like a miracle. It does, it does, It
24:06
Speaker 1: makes for a good story. I love the use of
24:08
Speaker 1: the word disgorged. That's just a fancy word for puke.
24:11
Speaker 1: Like we said at the top, like hillock. What's a hill? Hillock? Uh?
24:15
Speaker 1: Small hill? Rivulette? So yeah, exactly, maybe yeah, maybe like
24:19
Speaker 1: a hill. Let you know, like a like a small
24:22
Speaker 1: diminutive hill, but that you have more you know, accounts
24:25
Speaker 1: like this, like orzen f. Whitney said something similarly. When
24:28
Speaker 1: it seemed that nothing could stay the devastation, great flocks
24:32
Speaker 1: of gulls appeared, filling the air with their white wings
24:35
Speaker 1: and plaintive cries, and settled down upon the half ruined fields.
24:39
Speaker 1: All day long they gorged themselves and YadA, YadA, YadA.
24:42
Speaker 1: You get it. But doesn't all this kind of sound hyperbolic,
24:45
Speaker 1: do you, Ben? Doesn't all this sound like as an agenda,
24:48
Speaker 1: like it's trying to really push this angle of like
24:51
Speaker 1: it was a miracle from God and we made it happen. Yeah.
24:55
Speaker 1: And you know that's the thing, because I would almost
24:58
Speaker 1: categorize the counts in two different sort of buckets. So
25:03
Speaker 1: the people who are writing on the ground as this
25:07
Speaker 1: is happening to me, it makes sense that they would
25:09
Speaker 1: absolutely see this as an act of the divine or
25:12
Speaker 1: a miracle. But the people writing in the years and
25:16
Speaker 1: decades afterwards, I think they might be playing a little
25:20
Speaker 1: telephone and they may be embellishing, you know. Um. We
25:23
Speaker 1: know specifically that it was around early June, maybe June
25:27
Speaker 1: ninth or so, when these goals first appeared, and they
25:33
Speaker 1: stayed for three weeks. They showed up every day for
25:36
Speaker 1: three weeks, and one pioneer, John Smith, said that there
25:39
Speaker 1: must have been thousands and thousands of them, and people
25:43
Speaker 1: were amazed to find these lumps of dead, vomited crickets.
25:48
Speaker 1: That's one of the things that people focus on and
25:51
Speaker 1: one of the things that made it, I believe, seemed
25:53
Speaker 1: miraculous to them. The goals were just because they were
25:58
Speaker 1: eating and regurgitating crickets. It's almost like they were just
26:01
Speaker 1: there to kill them rather than to eat their fill.
26:05
Speaker 1: So this I think adds to that legendary status. And man,
26:11
Speaker 1: it just became more and more of a legend ever
26:13
Speaker 1: since then, like less than five months later, people were
26:17
Speaker 1: writing about this and it was starting to make more
26:20
Speaker 1: and more news. We have multitudes of accounts of this.
26:25
Speaker 1: But despite these glowing accounts and these stories that make
26:32
Speaker 1: this seem like an epic, which in a way it was,
26:35
Speaker 1: we do have to note this was not the only
26:37
Speaker 1: time crickets invaded the area, right, I think crickets regularly
26:43
Speaker 1: returned during harvest seasons. And not only that, Like, this
26:48
Speaker 1: wasn't like the first miraculous appearance of seagulls either, Right,
26:52
Speaker 1: they were very much, you know, something that would have
26:55
Speaker 1: been around most of the time, right, I mean even
26:57
Speaker 1: even today, like in Salt Lake City, seagulls are known
27:02
Speaker 1: for being kind of like the billy goats of the air,
27:04
Speaker 1: Like they will eat just about anything and are often
27:07
Speaker 1: seen kind of hovering around like garbage dumps for example. Right. Yeah,
27:13
Speaker 1: that's a good way to put it. I like that,
27:14
Speaker 1: the billy goats of the city. Yeah, there's not much
27:18
Speaker 1: that seagulls won't eat, sometimes to their detriment. But we
27:23
Speaker 1: know that after crickets came back during the harvest season
27:30
Speaker 1: other years, and sometimes in different parts of Utah, even
27:34
Speaker 1: more crickets showed up than the ones that showed up
27:36
Speaker 1: in and pretty much every single example of a cricket invasion,
27:43
Speaker 1: the goals came back to feast on the crickets again.
27:47
Speaker 1: So what we may have been seeing was just a
27:50
Speaker 1: natural phenomenon or a cycle, you know what I mean.
27:53
Speaker 1: If that makes sense, but it's still it's still those
27:56
Speaker 1: other ones, even those other cricket infestations, even if they
28:00
Speaker 1: were bigger, they still didn't get as much press as
28:03
Speaker 1: the eighteen forty eight miracle. Exactly right, exactly right. No, No,
28:08
Speaker 1: it's very true, and I think, you know, again, not
28:12
Speaker 1: to be cynical, but it does all kind of point
28:14
Speaker 1: to this being a bit of a trumped up miracle
28:17
Speaker 1: that kind of became this legendary part of of the
28:21
Speaker 1: lore of Salt Lake City or of Utah and of
28:24
Speaker 1: the LDS faith. Those things are important. I'm not saying
28:28
Speaker 1: it didn't happen um or it wasn't a consequential occurrence
28:32
Speaker 1: that maybe helped them out, but it does sure seem
28:34
Speaker 1: like they were a little bit on the late side
28:36
Speaker 1: in terms of like swooping in the save of the day.
28:38
Speaker 1: So let's explore that just a little bit. It is
28:40
Speaker 1: a very like I said a hundred seventy years later,
28:43
Speaker 1: historians like Stephen Harper, for example, or William Hartley, Casey Griffith's,
28:49
Speaker 1: you know, specifically Brigham Young University, who are all scholars
28:53
Speaker 1: of the Church or Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
28:56
Speaker 1: at Brigham Young University have tried to, you know, clarify
29:01
Speaker 1: some of the aspects of the story that even they
29:04
Speaker 1: feel have been overstated or over dramatized. Let's say, the
29:09
Speaker 1: various popular accounts that we've read that I'll kind of
29:13
Speaker 1: have a bit of an air of hyperbole to them.
29:16
Speaker 1: They are looking to kind of improve upon those accounts,
29:21
Speaker 1: or the very least back them up with more historical
29:24
Speaker 1: facts rather than these legendary qualities they seem to have.
29:28
Speaker 1: Hardly writes this about it. He says, the fact remains,
29:30
Speaker 1: nonetheless that the Mormon pioneers would have suffered more than
29:35
Speaker 1: they did had not the goals come to their aid. Okay, physically,
29:38
Speaker 1: the goals helped avert a complete agricultural disaster. So they
29:43
Speaker 1: definitely had decimated a lot of the crops, but they
29:46
Speaker 1: weren't completely too late to help, you know, salvage some
29:52
Speaker 1: of it. Right, Yeah, Yeah, And let me give some
29:55
Speaker 1: context for what Harper, Hartley and Griffith's are were working through.
30:01
Speaker 1: This was considered a legitimate miracle because of the events
30:05
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight. The community revered the bird, and
30:09
Speaker 1: they even started creating laws to punish people for killing
30:14
Speaker 1: a goal that would be a fine of five dollars,
30:16
Speaker 1: but you could also have been found in violation of
30:19
Speaker 1: the law by quote, harassing the bird. I don't know
30:22
Speaker 1: what extent that. I don't know how they defied harassment,
30:25
Speaker 1: but I love the idea of somebody new to town
30:28
Speaker 1: walking down like a main dragon Saal Lake City seeing
30:31
Speaker 1: a bird and going hey, you you know, knucklehead, and
30:35
Speaker 1: then they get busted. They get thrown in the you know,
30:37
Speaker 1: the bird harassment tank and they have to pay five dollars,
30:40
Speaker 1: which was a lot of money in eighteen eight. We
30:43
Speaker 1: know that it was called a miracle as soon as
30:45
Speaker 1: September of eighteen fifty three, and people got into this legend. So,
30:51
Speaker 1: like you said, centuries later, Uh, these historians are working
30:55
Speaker 1: against a really popular idea, you know what I mean.
31:00
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are people who are aware of the
31:02
Speaker 1: other occurrences and they're saying, well, this is kind of
31:06
Speaker 1: a legend, but we want to hold onto it because
31:09
Speaker 1: we really like this story. And now you have to
31:11
Speaker 1: be part of being an historian sometimes is you have
31:14
Speaker 1: to be the party pooper who comes in and like says, actually, uh,
31:20
Speaker 1: this is this is weird, because hardly found something really
31:25
Speaker 1: interesting when he looked at the original descriptions of those
31:31
Speaker 1: cricket invasions, and he says it must not be overlooked
31:34
Speaker 1: that this official summary of Valley experiences from the first
31:38
Speaker 1: arrival of the Pioneers until nine nowhere mentions the goals,
31:43
Speaker 1: despite prominent notice paid to the cricket plague. So this
31:48
Speaker 1: leads hardly to argue that the actual physical benefit brought
31:53
Speaker 1: by those goals could not probably wasn't as extensive as
31:59
Speaker 1: the story would of us believe. And that's that's pretty interesting.
32:01
Speaker 1: I think it goes to your point about the timing
32:04
Speaker 1: of when the goals showed up and how much help
32:06
Speaker 1: they actually provided. Yeah, that's true, um, But but again
32:10
Speaker 1: it wasn't an absolutely zero some game. They possibly appeared
32:15
Speaker 1: on a smaller scale than um is believed or is
32:18
Speaker 1: is recounted by. Again, like some of these accounts just
32:21
Speaker 1: very clearly have kind of an agenda. But it did happen,
32:25
Speaker 1: and it was something that did make a difference. And
32:27
Speaker 1: there's a really good quote from Griffith's in the Desert
32:31
Speaker 1: News where he says, I'm not ready to tear down
32:33
Speaker 1: the seagull monument on Temple Square because the goals are
32:36
Speaker 1: only a symbol of the greater miracle that the pioneers
32:39
Speaker 1: were able to survive in the valley at all, given
32:42
Speaker 1: the conditions they lived in. The modern lesson might be
32:45
Speaker 1: constantly scanning the horizon for a flock of goals when
32:48
Speaker 1: help might be before us in a smaller, more simple way.
32:52
Speaker 1: That's a really good point. It's a good way of
32:53
Speaker 1: looking at it. So the goals, in making them the
32:56
Speaker 1: state bird and in erecting this monument, they really are
32:59
Speaker 1: more of a sim bowl kind of, right of like
33:01
Speaker 1: the perseverance of of these settlers and these pioneers, and
33:05
Speaker 1: about their resilience in the face of like all this adversity,
33:08
Speaker 1: which absolutely happened. But maybe the gulls were not like
33:11
Speaker 1: the magic bullet from on high that everyone seems to
33:15
Speaker 1: think they were. At least, you know, some of the
33:16
Speaker 1: accounts would indicate, Yeah, yeah, you know, we're not. We're
33:20
Speaker 1: not here to disparage a good story, right, So we're
33:25
Speaker 1: glad to report that the real truth is not too
33:28
Speaker 1: far off from fiction. If you live in Utah today,
33:33
Speaker 1: you'll see the core elements of this story. Seagulls are
33:37
Speaker 1: everywhere in the Salt Lake valley and they eat bugs.
33:40
Speaker 1: But to your point, Noel, they will eat almost anything
33:44
Speaker 1: up to and including garbage. You called them billy goates
33:47
Speaker 1: of the sky. I think it's fair to call them
33:50
Speaker 1: airborne taraars. If anybody remembers that guy, the guy that
33:56
Speaker 1: maybe ate a baby, we talked about him last episode two,
33:58
Speaker 1: I think unproven that it's again also the stuff of legend. Right, Um,
34:03
Speaker 1: so I don't know that there you have it like, uh,
34:05
Speaker 1: I think, um, it's it's interesting the way you're right
34:08
Speaker 1: that historical game of telephone happens, especially when there's sort
34:13
Speaker 1: of like a a need to create sort of like
34:17
Speaker 1: a rallying point, you know, story with which all future
34:21
Speaker 1: you know, members of this faith can kind of rally around.
34:24
Speaker 1: It's something that you know, we see and like the
34:26
Speaker 1: Christian Bible, where it's like is this story like more
34:29
Speaker 1: of a an allegory or is it meant to be literal?
34:32
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously there are folks who take everything
34:34
Speaker 1: in the Bible as being completely literal, and then there
34:36
Speaker 1: are those who feel that they are more kind of
34:39
Speaker 1: metaphors or stories that you can kind of learn lessons from.
34:42
Speaker 1: But that probably didn't happen exactly the way they're they're told,
34:45
Speaker 1: but they're effective nonetheless, right, yeah, absolutely, And crickets are
34:50
Speaker 1: still there, and they can still be a problem. They
34:54
Speaker 1: can still be a threat. As recently as two thousand
34:57
Speaker 1: and three, crickets did more than twenty five million dollars
35:00
Speaker 1: of damage agriculturally speaking. But you may be happy to
35:04
Speaker 1: know that some farmers have come up with a new
35:07
Speaker 1: method of fighting them that doesn't involve seagulls. According to
35:11
Speaker 1: our good friends at Mental Floss, some farmers found that
35:15
Speaker 1: lasting rock music around their fields apparently kept the crickets
35:20
Speaker 1: at bay. And you might be wondering, what what rock
35:24
Speaker 1: music are they talking about? Right? Are they going indie?
35:26
Speaker 1: Are they going clam rock? Are they going heavy metal? Well,
35:30
Speaker 1: according to the Wall Street Journal, crickets are not fans
35:33
Speaker 1: of Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. So that's that's
35:36
Speaker 1: your key, that's your new insect repellent. Folks must be
35:40
Speaker 1: a frequency range thing, I guess there. Maybe they are. Yeah,
35:44
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could like get rid of a
35:46
Speaker 1: plague of crickets with like a certain note, like a
35:49
Speaker 1: certain frequency that would just cause them all to flee
35:51
Speaker 1: and terror, or maybe you just have to play like
35:54
Speaker 1: sticky fingers for them or something. You know, that's a
35:56
Speaker 1: good question, and you know this inspires me to propose
35:59
Speaker 1: that we maybe we in the future we can make
36:02
Speaker 1: an episode on music as a weapon. Actually, that could
36:06
Speaker 1: be on stuff they don't want you to know, as
36:07
Speaker 1: well our the other show that we do together. Agreed, No, agreed.
36:11
Speaker 1: I love the idea of sonic weapons. I don't love.
36:13
Speaker 1: It's terrifying, and we've actually seen them deployed in a
36:17
Speaker 1: certain kind of crowd dispersal situations during a lot of
36:20
Speaker 1: these protests. I think there was sort of like an
36:22
Speaker 1: example of a use of experimental sonic weapons. And where
36:26
Speaker 1: was it been? Somewhere in South America? Right, Yeah, there
36:28
Speaker 1: have been sonic weapons used to disperse crowds of humans
36:32
Speaker 1: and protests. There have been sonic weapons apparently used to
36:38
Speaker 1: interfere with embussies in Cuba as well as allegedly China.
36:44
Speaker 1: This story has has a lot of legs. Man, it's
36:47
Speaker 1: got a lot of cricket legs. Oh gosh, let me
36:53
Speaker 1: get some chirps on that. When Max got me with
36:55
Speaker 1: the chirps, are is this's the thumbs up from Max?
36:58
Speaker 1: That's how Nolan I know that we've done We've done
37:01
Speaker 1: an okay job here, but we want to Oh wow, okay,
37:05
Speaker 1: we got a hand wave from Max. Max, what's a
37:08
Speaker 1: hand wave me? Scale one to ten. I'll leave that
37:12
Speaker 1: up to your own interpretation, right there, Fair, I'm gonna
37:15
Speaker 1: be haunted Max. He's such an enigma. But yeah, Hughes
37:18
Speaker 1: thanks to Max as always, superproducer Max Williams, Alex Williams,
37:23
Speaker 1: brother of Max, who composed this theme. Christopher Haciotes here
37:26
Speaker 1: in spirit, Jonathan Strickling, the Quister miss that guy zoom
37:30
Speaker 1: bombs us again soon. Yeah, he's our one man plague
37:33
Speaker 1: of crickets, which I wonder if he knows how many
37:37
Speaker 1: weird nicknames we give him at the end of the show.
37:40
Speaker 1: I hope he enjoys them. The one and only Quister.
37:42
Speaker 1: Folks give it up for him. Also give it up
37:44
Speaker 1: for our excellent research associate Gabe Louisier, our friend of
37:48
Speaker 1: the show, Eve's Jeff Coat and uh no, I gotta say, yeah,
37:52
Speaker 1: this this is a This is a pretty fun When
37:55
Speaker 1: I would categorize this as um gosh, would it be
37:59
Speaker 1: a step too far to see it's modern us mythology?
38:03
Speaker 1: I think so. That that was the thing that fascinated
38:06
Speaker 1: me about it too, and that's you know, I mean,
38:08
Speaker 1: I mean, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
38:10
Speaker 1: Saints is relatively speaking, a you know, newer religion, so
38:15
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to look at the kind of mythology
38:18
Speaker 1: behind that. And there's a lot more to it as well,
38:20
Speaker 1: um that maybe we should discuss on another episode. Agreed, Agreed.
38:24
Speaker 1: Main takeaway from this one is you don't have to
38:26
Speaker 1: trust seagulls, but respect their work. We'll see you next Potbox.
38:37
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
38:39
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
38:42
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.