THE LOCUST PEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1938, Page 3

THE LOCUST PEST

DURBAN INVENTOR’S TRAP. MAKING INVASIONS PAY. A Durban man has invented a trap which he claims will make locust invasions pay for their own extermination. The idea is to set up a wall of oil cloth (up which the “voetgangers” or locusts not still in the hopping stage cannot climb) across the line of march of a hopper invasion. These walls are funnel-shaped, to concentrate the swarm into a small passage. Near this bottle-neck are mazes of tinplate, designed to prevent the hoppers from retracing their steps before they reach an upward ramp, covered with sacking to provide better foothold. The hopper swarm moves up the ramp, which ends abruptly over a trough, into which the swarm falls. There are now three different means of dealing with the insects. Where water is plentiful water is the medium Mr Freeman prefers, and he has designed a special rapid-heat-ing boiler for use with his trap. This boiler keeps up a circulation of boiling water through the trough, naturally killing the hoppers. From here they pass to a bin at the end of the trough, and they are then bagged and sold as fowl food or fertiliser.