Scores of smelly crickets have swarmed parts of the U.S. Will they invade N.J.?

New Jersey has already had its fair share of yucky insect invasions, from the huge swarms of cicadas two years ago to spotted lanternflies that have been pestering suburban yards and city buildings for the past several years.

Do we now have to worry about an invasion of smelly, long-legged crickets — bugs that have been swarming streets and sidewalks in parts of the western United States during recent weeks?

Experts say there’s no need to get squeamish. Those jumpy critters, known as Mormon crickets even though they are technically classified as katydids (which look like grasshoppers), are unlikely to make their way to eastern states like New Jersey, New York or Pennsylvania.

Amy K. Korman, a bug expert who serves as horticulture extension educator at the Penn State Extension in Northampton and Lehigh counties in eastern Pennsylvania, said the Mormon crickets are found in the western part of the U.S.

Korman and other experts say they are likely to remain in that region because they don’t fly. They crawl and jump. Sometimes in huge numbers, according to a recent report by the Associated Press.

In late May and early June, residents reported that tens of thousands of Mormon cricket eggs buried about an inch deep in the soil began to hatch in the western U.S. That sparked a big invasion of the jumping insects across a wide swath of northern Nevada and resulted in chaos.

Some say the big bugs leave behind a stench so horrible, akin to burning flesh, that it forces residents to plug their noses while driving. The critters stick to tires and the bottoms of shoes, and their carcasses are everywhere, even in gyms. When they move, it sounds like rain, some Nevada residents reported.

Residents and workers have reportedly used brooms, leaf blowers, pressure washers and snow plows to get rid of the crickets, only for them to return. State officials have erected signs throughout Elko County warning drivers of slick highways — caused by big swarms of dead crickets and other bugs feeding on them.

One Elko County resident was driving through her small Nevada town when she thought she had come upon a gory crash. The ground surrounding a stretch of Interstate 80 looked as if it had been covered in blood. As the red color shifted and moved, she realized instead it was an infestation of crickets, some bigger than her thumb.

“It’s almost like a biblical plague,” the driver told The Associated Press last week, laughing at the absurdity of the situation that is playing out in northern Nevada.

How big is this bug invasion?

Longtime Nevada State Entomologist Jeff Knight said it’s difficult to place a solid estimate on how many Mormon crickets have invaded the northern part of his state, because bands of the bugs are scattered around over a wide area.

“We’ve had pockets of them throughout northern Nevada, varying in size from 5 to 10 acres to maybe 100 acres or 200 acres,” Knight told NJ Advance Media on Friday. Some of those pockets, known as bands, are light, with one bug per square yard, and some are heavier, with 15 to 20 per square yard.

Knight said Nevada is not the only state with Mormon cricket infestations in recent weeks. Swarms have also been reported in Utah, Idaho and Oregon as well.

“We experience these outbreaks roughly every 10 to 15 years, but it’s not all over the place,” Knight said. “There are little pockets here and there.” And each outbreak can last a few years.

When these insects first hatch — usually in mid-March, but later than that this year — the Mormon crickets are black, with a little bit of white on them. “Then they go through color phases, black to brown and some green or orange… As they become adults, they have this reddish-maroon hue to them.”

“When they get run over, you see this maroonish color,” he said. The bugs that survive into their full adult phase are typically black.

Knight said people describe the odor of these bugs differently, but he wouldn’t describe the smell as fleshy.

“When they get squished or they die, they tend to get stinky,” he said. “They smell like dead crickets to me…. but they do have an odor to them.”

Knight said Mormon crickets are not known in the eastern United States. They thrive in the Great Basin and Intermountain West region, and the farthest east where infestations will occur are western Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming.

Hiding in your basement

Gene Kritsky, a bug expert and researcher based at Mount St. Joseph University in Ohio, agrees the Mormon crickets won’t be invading New Jersey or other eastern states anytime soon.

“No, they will not come out” to the eastern U.S., Kritsky told NJ Advance Media. “They’ve adapted to life in the sage brush and terrain of the western United States.”

Instead, people in the Garden State region are more likely to encounter large black field crickets, Kritsky noted. One species of that type of cricket tends to emerge in May and June, and another in late July, August or September.

Unlike the Mormon crickets, the black field crickets have wings, so they sometimes will fly. But Kritsky said the field crickets tend to hop with their “jumpy hind legs,” and they are known to hide in piles of leaves and crawl into basements.

Kritsky said the noise they make sounds like chirping, but it’s actually the sound of the critters rubbing their wings together.

As for those pesky Mormon crickets, Kritsky said “they’re 2 to 3 inches long. They’re flightless, and when they start this migration, they’re hopping — not flying — and eating everything in their path.” Kritsky said they eat more than 400 different plants, “but when they get really big in numbers, they cannibalize each other… They’ll eat them (other crickets) dead or alive.”

Korman, from the Penn State Extension, said the most common types of crickets found in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are field crickets, house crickets, tree crickets and camel crickets.

Their life cycles vary from species to species, and some have wings while others don’t.

Korman said crickets don’t bite people or household pets, “but some people eat crickets.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com.