Grasshoppers Invade Fairfield Homes, Eating All Vegetation
FAIRFIELD (CBS13) - Millions of grasshoppers are tearing up people's gardens in Fairfield.
Camouflaged into the hills of Solano County, little critters are crawling everywhere.
Grasshoppers are not just gorging on grass but they're hitting homes.
The Granko family home has a lot of landscaping around it. The grasshoppers are eating it up.
"They're irritating as hell," said Marc Granko on Thursday. "They just eat everything."
The grasshoppers are climbing walls, and hitting the pool.
"I just got finished cleaning [the pool] two hours ago," said Granko.
Mostly they're tearing up gardens.
Granko says these grasshoppers were here five years ago too, and did the same thing.
"You wake up one day, and they're everywhere. I mean they're just everywhere," said Granko.
Down the street is more grasshopper garden gore.
Bob Stearns says he's just waiting.
"We're waiting anywhere from two to six weeks for them to breed and die and go away," said Stearns.
The Solano County Agriculture Department is now warning people here to put nets on their plants.
It's a lot of land to cover.
"I guess you could do that but out here it'd be impossible, a real headache," said Stearns.
Ideal weather and lack of predators may have created the bug boom. Now these grasshoppers are forcing garden makeovers, just not until they leave.
"I'm not angry, circle of life. I work in [agriculture] and this is how it works," said Stearns.
Farmers in the area are allowed to use specific pesticides to protect their crops that are not available to homeowners.
