Yes, you read that right. It was an attack on the Locust swarm, not the other way round.
It was one fine evening of May 2020 - my field work being off for the day, I was lazing around in the basecamp, sipping on some mango shake, trying hard to cope up with the scorching 50 degrees of the Desert outside. Suddenly, a senior made an announcement that we all need to go to catch some locusts. "Catch locusts?" I questioned again, hoping desperately that what I heard was false. But unfortunately, that wasn't. (Am embarrassed to confess that being a wildlife enthusiast, I have a phobia of insects, which am trying to overcome now.) Apparently, locust is a favourite snack for the critically endangered Great Indian Bustards (GIB). With the latest hype of 'Locust Attack' going all around, the plan for the day was to get some treats for the GIBs of our captive breeding centre.
Well, let me tell you the short background story first.
Mostly, all of you might remember, all the hype in the news going on last year about the Locust Swarm attacking several states of India. Almost 20 years later, this phenomenon got repeated. The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) normally breed in semi-arid or desert landscapes of Africa, Middle East and India. With excessive heavy rainfall and cyclones happening in these regions owning to climate change, large scale breeding of the desert locust happened.
Locusts are generally not a threat as individuals, or in small isolated groups. But while forming swarms, they undergo a behaviour change and change from pale short winged 'solitary' form to a dark, long winged 'gregarious' form which actively aggregates and can travel thousands of kilometers. They turn out to be a huge threat as the swarm destroy miles of agricultural crops very quickly. Hence the term "Locust Attack".
But we wildlifers here, prepared to attack these locusts instead. So our 15 people army got ready with some lidded buckets, nets and torches. After the Sunset, as the remote desert scrubland went pitch dark, our army tiptoed into the enemy basecamp that is the shrubs and bushes where the locusts rest for the day. The formation was made with people standing in the back row with the buckets in hand, the middle row formed of people with nets and then the frontliners with the torches. As soon as the torchers aimed at a shrub, out came hundreds of those peg shaped invertebrates shooting like bullets at all of us. While I was trying to hide and not get hit with another insect, I saw all my fellow companions getting extremely excited and started jumping all around trying to catch them all. Some with the nets and some with bare hands only, were bouncing and rolling in the sand trying to catch every individual one can spot. Within seconds I found them bringing fists full of locusts and filling the buckets. The bucketers also had a hard time, trying to keep the lid shut, without a single individual escaping. Few still managed to escape, and few met with unfortunate accidents like losing a leg or a wing, the rest mostly intact inside the buckets ready to be a feast for the GIBs. There were sudden shrieks and cries about one complaining how a locusts landed right on their face, and then there were laughter for one falling down on the sand in a failed attempt to catch a locust.
At the end of the battle, we were victorious and had four buckets packed till the brim with our prisoners.
I was of course in an anxious state during this whole affair. I was just a mere spectator of the entire scene rather than contributing to it much. But, being the observer made me the narrator of the eccentric, funny and yet a significant event of a wildlife conservationist's life.
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