Big bummer! At least the 'Deer Off' seems to work to keeping deer at bay, but I don't know what or how to keep hoards of grasshoppers away. Are they a continuous issue? or are they only a problem in certain years on a cycle?

My daughter, who is 6, got 2 pet chicks earlier this year, and they are now free-range, hunert'-and-ten-percent effort, grasshopper catchers and morning worm pullers. They can spot a hopper from half the yard away, and tear after them at full tilt.

madscientist... I heard on the news that its drought related. We always have them but they are bad because of 5 dry years and the population has grown. I wish it would hail on the little devils. No wait! No hail, please!

David... you have me so tempted to run out and buy some chickens, rofl. How cute that must be watching them run thru the garden and "hunt."

Why can't rabbits eats hoppers and deer eat rabbits?? Then all we would need is Deer Off!

I saw my first grasshopper yesterday. Our little dog likes to pounce on them and chew them to death. Hopefully they won't get bad here. They did a story on the news about them in southern Utah. They are having a horrible time there. An aerial view showed a field that had been green a week before and now it is brown as can be.

What is driving me nuts is the tent caterpillars in my willow tree. I researched and found there wasn't much that can be done about them but the scat mess they are making on the sidewalk and the fact that they are all over the side of my house makes me crazy!
I pick them off the tree trunk and house and step on over a hundred ever day. YUCK!!

Linda in Wyoming

About the grasshoppers and worms...We have 1 1/2 acres out in a country area. When we moved in at the beginning of the drought 5 years ago, we had grasshoppers everywhere. I tried to garden...no luck. Then the rabbits came. They didn't eat the grasshoppers so now we had grasshoppers and rabbits. I bought some of those cute little chicks and how I've loved my chickens ever since (avoid the roosters if you want peace and quiet). The grasshoppers are gone! but they didn't eat the rabbits. I fenced the garden with chicken wire to keep out the rabbits and the chickens. Many varieties of chickens love to dig holes, you know. The feather-footed kinds are less likely to turn any bare spot into a dust-bath hole, but all of them eat any bug or worm they see.

I also bought guineas which eat lots of bugs, including ticks. They are prolific insect eaters. I have had giant pearl guineas and the smaller guineas and the smaller guineas definitely get my vote. Guineas are VERY vocal. When I read that I thought "that's ok". Well, it's not "ok". The giant Pearl guineas are extremely LOUD! and I mean LOUD! That wouldn't even be intolerable but they squawk non-stop, at least for the first year, only stopping when they go to sleep. The smaller guineas are not quite as loud, but I think one of them squawked until she got hoarse! In their defense, they are pretty birds and fantastic bug-eaters, and they don't dig.
Anyway, the point is, the birds have conquered the bugs.