Swarmed

Flying things are on the menu for today's visit to the Cabinet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. What we call a

(00:37):
group of animals says a lot about how we see them.
We call a group of crows a murder because of
the bird's ominous appearance. We call ants a colony or
an army of ants because of how they move information
like a small society. And when you see a plague
of locusts on the horizon, well, that collective noun comes
from the Book of Exodus in the Bible. But what

(00:59):
makes a locust unique among these creatures is that there
really isn't such a thing as a solitary locust. When
they're on their own, we call them grasshoppers. Taxonomically, they're identical.
The only real difference is how they socialize. A grasshopper
is solitary locusts, however, swarm. In other words, not all
grasshoppers are locusts, but all locusts are grasshoppers. They are

(01:22):
a creature with a surprisingly rich cultural history. They're mentioned
in a number of religious texts from around the world
in different cultures. As far as swarming animals go, they
are the most famous. And with that in mind, let
me take you back to the eighteen seventies in America.
Immediately post Civil War, post westward expansion, farmers in the
Great Plains of North America were working hard to keep

(01:44):
up with a rapidly changing country, making a home for
themselves in a land that was settled but not fully developed.
Late in eighteen seventy three to early eighteen seventy four
was a tough time for people, in particular an economic
recession that led to all harsh winter and a dry summer.
And while the panic in the economy was the main
thing on people's minds in late eighteen seventy three, conditions

(02:08):
would be just right for a new sort of panic
to begin as well. The first sightings were in June
of eighteen seventy three, but they wouldn't reach their full
peak until the following year. It started as a shadow
in the sky, a glistening, vaporous cloud, but the closer
it came the darker. It really seemed there were thousands
upon thousands of insects in the sky rocky mountain, locusts

(02:31):
coming right for them. Farmers scrambled to protect their crops
against the impending swarm. They threw blankets over vegetables, They
locked their windows, They covered their wells to protect the water.
But after a point there was only so much you
could do. The incoming locusts ate everything that wasn't nailed down.
They ate away the blankets that protected the crops. They

(02:52):
ate bridles from the backs of horses. They ate curtains
and sheets when they got inside. Some farmers had to.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Shake the locusts off their bedclothes before going to sleep
at night, and again when they woke up in the morning.
At least one woman reported that as she froze with fear,
the creatures ate the dress she was wearing. This locust
plague lasted for five whole years. It was a wave
that swept across the center of North America, covering over
two million square miles between eighteen seventy four and eighteen

(03:22):
seventy seven. Multiple state governments attempted to address the devastation,
with minimal results. They offered bounties to those who could
destroy the eggs in between swarms, but there were simply
too many locusts to keep up with. Farmers resorted to
a series of increasingly elaborate measures to dispose of the bugs.
In one instance, someone dug a ditch around his farm,

(03:43):
filled it with tar, and then lit it on fire
to create a barrier between the locusts and his crops,
but the locusts were so thick in the air that
they smothered the flames with their bodies. Overall, there were
trillions of locusts involved in the plague. One of the
swarms was one thousand, eight hundred miles long. For context,
that is over half the width of the continental United States.

(04:05):
It took five whole days for this enormous swarm to
pass overhead, and in that time it would completely block
out the sun for up to six hours at a time.
Some farmers starved in the devastation. Others took the advice
of local entomologists and actually ate the locusts for sustenance.
They were, however, in the minority, as eating large bugs
requires some effort to get used to, even if they're

(04:27):
cooked and well seasoned. The locusts disappeared suddenly in eighteen
seventy seven, following an especially cold winter that likely destroyed
many of their eggs. The particular type of locusts that
caused the catastrophe, the Rocky Mountain locust, is believed to
have gone extinct by the early nineteen hundreds, the plague
of the eighteen seventies becoming in hindsight, something of a

(04:48):
last hurrah for the species. Few creatures on their way
to extinction go out with a bang rather than a whimper,
and these locust plagues are a reminder to all of
us that even the smallest insect can make a legendary
impact on history. The people of Mitchell's Lake had questions, namely,

(05:20):
what intarnation was doctor Charles Campbell building on the edge
of town. For weeks they had watched the unusual structure
come together plank by plank. It wasn't a barn or
a house, or any kind of building they'd seen before.
Tall and narrow, with odd slats and perched on four
thick beams, it loomed over the lake an enigmatic wooden monolith.

(05:42):
No one could guess its purpose, and whenever anyone asked
Campbell what he was up to. He would respond with
a knowing wink and a smile that he would say,
is a cure. It wasn't much of an answer, to
be honest, but the locals had no doubt what disease
he meant. In nineteen eleven, malaria was a major public
health threat in Texas, and San Antonio was one of

(06:03):
the worst hit cities. The swampy Mitchell's Lake area on
the city south side was home to millions of mosquitoes
that carried the parasite. Earlier that year, Campbell had tested
the local population of the eighty seven adults and children
who lived on farms around the lake, and astonishing seventy
eight of them were infected with malaria. So you can

(06:23):
imagine they were desperate for help, and there was a
reason to hope that doctor Campbell might actually have a solution.
The forty six year old two Lane graduate was a
respected bacteriologist. Just a decade earlier, he had helped stop
a typhoid epidemic that had seized San Antonio. But recently
something had changed. Campbell had shuddered his medical practice and

(06:44):
become a recluse. He'd gone off the grid, spending hours
wandering in the woods alone. People said that he'd gone battye.
But when Campbell finally completed his tower in the spring
of nineteen eleven, the mystery only deepened. Soon, strained noxious
odors began wafting from the thirty foot tall wooden structure,

(07:04):
and then the noises began, not from the tower itself,
but from the surrounding area. Late at night, people started
hearing a loud orchestra of music from deep in the woods.
Campbell was showing up near abandoned buildings in large trees,
blasting music at ridiculous levels. He banked pots and pans
and made as much ruckous as he could, and from

(07:25):
there it didn't take long for the locals to figure
out what he was up to. The doctor was driving
bats out of their hiding places, making their old roosts
unbearable with the noise, and where did they go to
the carefully designed structure that he had just built for them.
The Tower at Mitchell's Lake was a house after all,
just not for people. The stench wafting from it was

(07:47):
guano or bat droppings. Campbell had filled his bathhouse with
cheesecloth soaked in the stuff hoping that it would make
his tower more inviting to the displaced bats, and it worked.
First a few bats arrived, and then hundreds, and then thousands.
Soon each evening brought a dark cloud spiraling from the
tower as bats took to the sky in search of food.

(08:10):
The Mitchell's Lake mosquito population plummeted as a result, and
with it went the disease. The next year Campbell retested
the population, there wasn't a single case of malaria. Words
spread quickly, and similar towers began to crop up all
throughout Texas, Florida, and even as far away as Italy.
They weren't always as effective as the one at Mitchell's Lake,

(08:32):
and eventually malaria was eradicated in the US through more
traditional medical advancements, But for a time, Campbell's clever innovation
was the best weapon against the disease. His work has
had a lasting effect too, not just in combating malaria,
but in changing people's relationship with bats. Once viewed as
disease carrying pests, they became a valued fixture in Texas skies. Today,

(08:56):
they're protected by state law in recognition of their eco
logical importance. And while Campbell's original tower has now collapsed.
Modern versions continue to be built. One near Brackencave in
San Antonio houses over twenty million bats, the largest mammal
colony in the world. They're a natural, cost effective form

(09:17):
of pest control, keeping farms and orchards free of insects
without the need for pesticides. It turns out doctor Campbell
learned a thing or two wandering around in those woods.
Thanks to him, we finally learned that sometimes bat neighbors
make the best neighbors. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided

(09:38):
tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
book series, and television show, and you can learn all

(10:00):
about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time,
stay curious.