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ST. GEORGE — The fluttering that flies out walking on the grass, the extra passenger on the hood of the car, those things flying around the streetlights at night.
People aren't imagining things. The grasshoppers are back.
While it's not near the scale of the massive infestation seen in spring 2019 when the ground was seemingly covered in grasshoppers and other insects, residents have noticed a proliferation of the hoppers in recent weeks.
University of Oklahoma insect ecologist Elske Tielens, who authored the study that determined the cause of the 2019 grasshopper infestation that struck Southern Utah and, to a greater extent, the Las Vegas area, said the cause of the current invasion is exactly the same: It's what comes after the storm when two metropolitan areas that act as light beacons in a mostly dark desert.
