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.