Locusts briefly disrupt traffic on Sharqiyah Coast Road

Hordes of locusts descended upon the Sharqiyah Coast Road, Highway 17, late on Thursday afternoon, momentarily disrupting southbound traffic. Riding with the aid of the strong coastal breeze from the south, the swarm of millions of the insects renowned since biblical times for their ability to leave famine and destruction in their wake, may have been migratory and driven less by hunger than a need to be somewhere else. Their actions seemed mindless and many simply dropped from the sky probably from exhaustion. Some of them flew again erratically for a short time, but eventually fell to the ground dead. Motorists spoke of the upsetting experience of having the locusts careering into cars with a sickening sound and on occasions forcing drivers to stop in order to stay safe. The Bible, the Holy Quran, Alexander the Great, and the Pharaohs have all featured locusts, swarming groups of migrating grasshoppers, as crop predators, and certainly this has happened, but mostly they are harmless. This is especially true in recent decades when they have proven of nuisance value rather than of any danger to man. A change in wind direction to the southwest was expected to see the swarm pushed seaward to the east, and out of sight. Locals in Qalhat indicated that the phenomenon was rare, but not unknown, interesting, a little inconvenient, but something to talk about for a few days, saying, “this is life, and nature. Maybe the fishes will be well fed. Inshallah.”