Uh, we don’t know about you all, but it’s really starting to feel like a 1960s horror movie here in our state.
Just weeks after Bellevue was haunted (and a little mystified) by an Atlas moth that was about 7,000 miles away from its Thailand home, Washington has another giant critter roaming its lands — the Egyptian grasshopper.
The bouncy hitchhiker native to the Mediterranean was caught by an Everett resident earlier this year, but the USDA just recently confirmed its identification. While regarded as a relatively minor pest, this species of legs with a face are still a fair bit bigger than our area’s everyday grasshoppers — close to double in size in some cases — and we’re kinda buggin’ out.
The Washington Department of Agriculture (WSDA) is looking for some help making sure the Everett sighting was the only one — send in a pic if you spot one. The grasshopper is on a similar watch list as the northern giant hornet, our friend the Atlas moth, and the Japanese beetle.
You can learn more about how to assist the WSDA in its work to find and remove invasive species. Just be sure to keep that mutant-growing radiation locked up tight.
