There is a small fly (Hydropyrus hians), belonging to the group known as "shore flies" (Diptera: Ephydridae), that formerly bred in vast numbers in the alkaline waters of Mono Lake and other alkaline lakes in the California-Nevada border region.  It was called kutsavi (or variations thereof) by the Paiute and other tribes.  The fly pupae washed ashore in long windrows.  J. Ross Browne', who visited Mono Lake in about 1865, told of encountering a deposit of pupae about two feet deep and three or four feet wide that extended "like a vast rim" around the lake: 

"I saw no end to it during a walk of several miles along the beach. ... It would appear that the worms [read fly pupae], as soon as they attain locomotion, creep up from the water, or are deposited on the beach by the waves during some of those violent gales which prevail in this region.  The Mono Indians derive from them a fruitful source of subsistence.  By drying them in the sun and mixing them with acorns, berries, grass-seeds, and other articles offood gathered up in the mountains, they make a conglomerate called cuchaba, which they use as a kind of bread.  I am told it is very nutritious and not at all unpalatable.  The worms are also eaten in their natural condition.  It is considered a delicacy to fry them in their own grease.  When properly prepared by a skillful cook they resemble pork 'cracklings.' I was not hungry enough to require one of these dishes during my sojourn, but would recommend any friend who may visit the lake to eat a pound or two and let me know the result at his earliest convenience .... There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of tons of these oleaginous insects cast up on the beach every year.  There is no danger of starvation on the shores of Mono.  The inhabitants may be snowed in, flooded out, or cut off by aboriginal hordes, but they can always rely upon the beach for fat meat."

William Brewer², a professor of agriculture, had sampled kutsavi during a visit to Mono Lake in 1863.  Noting that hundreds of bushels could be collected, he wrote: 

"The Indians come far and near to gather them.  The worms are dried in the sun, the shell rubbed off, when a yellowish kernal remains, like a small yellow grain of rice.  This is oily, very nutritious, and not unpleasant to the taste, and under the name of koo-chah-bee fon-ns a very important article of food.  The Indians gave me some; it does not taste bad, and if one were ignorant of its origin, it would make fine soup.  Gulls, ducks, snipe, frogs, and Indians fatten on it." 

Somewhat earlier, in 1845, Captain John C. Fremont was impressed with a windrow of kutsavi which he described as 10-20 feet in breadth and 7-12 inches deep.  Fremont related an experience told to

him by an old hunter, Mr. Joseph Walker.  Walker and his men had surprised a party of several Indian families encamped near a small lake who had abandoned their lodges at his approach, leaving everything behind them: 

"Being in a starving condition, they were delighted to find in the abandoned lodges a number of skin bags, containing a quantity of what appeared to be fish, dried and pounded.  On this they made a hearty supper; and were gathering around an abundant breakfast the next morning, when Mr. Walker discovered that it was with these, or a similar worrn, that the bags had been filled.  The stomachs of the stout trappers were, not proof against their prejudices, and the repulsive food was suddenly rejected." 

The Mormon cricket, Anabrus siniplex (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae), was another important insect food of the Indians, all over the West.  It is not really a cricket, being more closely related to katydids. It is a large insect, about two inches in length, wingless, and it travels in large, dense bands.  Bands may be more than a mile wide and several miles long, and with 20-30 or more crickets per square yard.  It is sometimes damaging to crops or range vegetation and has been a pest target of the U.S. Department of Agriculture since before the turn of the century.  Major Howard Egan' described, in his delightful first-person style, a Mormon cricket drive that took place in about 1850.  The procedure was basically to dig a series of trenches, each about 30 to 40 feet long and in the shape of a new moon, cover the trenches with a thin layer of stiff wheat grass straw, drive the crickets into the grass covering the trenches, and then set fire to the grass.  As the drive began, Egan thought the Indians were going to a great deal of trouble for a few crickets: "We followed them on horseback and I noticed that there were but very few crickets left behind.  As t hey went down, the line of crickets grew thicker and thicker till the ground ahead of the drivers [men, women and children] was black as coal with the excited, tumbling mass of crickets." After the grass had been fired, Egan observed that in some places the trenches were more than half full of dead crickets: "I went down below the trenches and I venture to say there were not one out of a thousand crickets that passed those trenches." 

Once the drive was over, the men and children had done their part and were sitting around while the women gathered the catch into large baskets which could be carried on their backs.  We should remember that this was long before the days of the womens' movement, as Egan says, in obvious admiration:

SEE AMERICAN INDIAN INSECT FOOD, P. 2  

American Indian Insect Food (from page one) 

"Now here is what I saw a squaw doing that had a small baby strapped to a board or a willow frame, which she carried on her back with a strap over her forehead: When at work she would stand or lay the frame and kid where she could see it at any time.  She soon had a large basket as full as she could crowd with crickets.  Laying it down near the kid, she took a smaller basket and filled it.  I should judge she had over four bushels of the catch.  But wait, the Indians were leaving for their camp about three or four miles away.  This squaw sat down beside the larger basket, put the band over her shoulders, got on her feet with it, then took the strapped kid and placed him on top, face up, picked up the other basket and followed her lord and master, who tramped ahead with nothing to carry except his own lazy carcass.  There were bushels of crickets left in the trenches, which I suppose they would gather later in the day." 

Egan learned that the crickets were used to make a bread that was very dark in color.  They were dried, then ground on the same mill used to grind pine nuts or grass seed, "making a fine flour that will keep a long time, if kept dry" (this was often refer-red to as "desert fruitcake" by early settlers).  Egan's Indian companion told him "the crickets make the bread good, the same as sugar used by the white woman in her cakes." 

There were other efficient methods of harvesting Mormon crickets.  One of them was to drive the crickets into a stream, circa 1864, as described in the journal of Perter Gottfredson⁵: "The squaws [placed) baskets in the ditch for the crickets to float into.  The male Indians with long willows strung along about twenty feet apart whipping the ground behind the crickets driving them towards the ditch.... [The crickets] tumbled into the ditch and floated down into the baskets. ... They got more than 50 bushels." In this instance, service berries and wild currants were mixed with the crickets to form the loaves of bread.  In a similar account of floating the crickets into baskets, John Young states that they were caught by the tons. 

Another method was to simply scoop up the crickets by the bushel when they were clustered under vegetation and too cold to be active.  Beatrice Whiting' wrote of the Paiute: "The women went out early in the morning and caught them, were back by sunrise, and spent the rest of the day roasting, drying, and pounding them and putting them in bags to be cached for the winter." 

There are few first-hand assessments of the flavor of Mormon crickets by early whites, for reasons that are apparent from the following excerpt from the reminiscenses of Captain Joseph Aram⁷ who was in the Humboldt Sink in 1846: "We came to an Indian village, they came out in strong force but finding us friendly, they treated us kindly.  They were digging roots on a creek bottom.  They looked like a small red carrot.  They gave us some that were cooked, they tasted like a sweet potato.  They also offered us some dried crickets but those were declined, thinking they would not relish well with us." According to a modem account of the Honey Lake Paiute (Lassen County, California) by F.A. Riddell⁸, when Mormon crickets were made into a soup, the flavor was somewhat like that of dried deer meat.  

A certain species of aphid even provided the Indians with sugar--in the form of the sweet honeydew it secreted.  In the early Mission records of California, Pere Picola wrote in 1702: "In the months of April, May and June there falls with the dew a kind of manna, which solidifies and hardens on the leaves of reeds from which it is collected.  I have tasted some.  It is a little less white than sugar, but has all the sweetness of it." Some of the Fathers considered this "manna" a dispensation from Heaven. 

John BidweII⁹, a pioneer in the Humboldt Sink area in 1841, looked at the "manna' with a more discerning eye: "We saw many Indians on the Humboldt, especially towards the sink.  There were many Tule marshes.  The tule is a rush, large, but here not very tall.  It was generally completely covered with honeydew, and this in turn was wholly covered with a pediculous-looking [louse-like] insect which fed upon it.  The Indians gathered quantities of the honey and pressed it into balls about the size of one's fist, having the appearance of wet bran.  At first we greatly relished this Indian food, but when we saw what it was made of--that the insects pressed into the mass were the main ingredient--we lost our appetites and bought no more of it." 

It wasn't until 1945 that the scientific identity of the aphid was determined.  Volney Jones¹⁰ established its identity as Hyaloplerus pruni, which is called the mealy plum aphid because it spends its winter phase on plum trees and other species of Prunus.  In the spring and early summer it migrates to summer hosts, primarily the reed grass, Phragmites communis, where it produces the honeydew.  The gathering of the honeydew seems to have been one of the annual seasonal rounds of activity of the Indians of the Great Basin.  A family or band might camp for a short time near a strewn or lake when the honeydew was ready.  By piecing together various accounts of the manner of collection, Jones gives the following picture: "The collection seems to have been primarily the work of women and children.  The reeds were cut and carried away from the water .... Cutting was done just after sunrise, and the reeds were spread out to dry during the warmer part of the day to dry the honeydew and make it brittle.  During the afternoon the reeds were held over a hide and beaten with a stick to dislodge the deposits of honeydew which fell on the hide and could be collected .... The honeydew was rolled into balls, wrapped in leaves, and stored in baskets until needed." 

Many other insects contributed on a regular basis to the Indian diet, among them grasshoppers, cicadas, ants and ant pupae, wasp pupae and prepupae, certain beetle larvae and several kinds of caterpillars.  Edible insect harvest was a part of the annual rounds of food procurement.  The Indians knew exactly where to go, and when, to find the desired insects, and large numbers of people and considerable planning, travel and effort were often involved in harvesting them (Sutton").  Some insects such as the Mormon cricket, grasshoppers and pandora moth caterpillars yielded a very high energy return for the energy expended in their harvest, often much higher than return rates from seeds or other plant food resources.  And, when dried, the insects were storable for use as winter food. 

SEE AMERICAN INDIAN INSECT FOOD, P. 10

Some Follow-Up Discussion Professor Berenbaum's Article on the Sequestering of Plant Toxins by Insects

The article, "Sequestered Plant Toxins and Insect Palatability" appeared in the November 1993 issue of The Food Insects Newsletter.  We were (and are) grateful to May Berenbaum, professor and head of the Entomology Department at the University of Illinois, for responding to our request for such an article, setting forth some of the principles pertaining to this subject.  Similarly, Professor Murray Blum of the University of Georgia prepared an article for the Newsletter on toxic compounds synthesized within the body of the insect; this appeared in the March 1994 issue.  Then, in April we received a note from a reader in Illinois which said, "Please remove my name from your mailing list.  I enjoy reading the Newsletter--but it encourages me to be a fulltime vegetarian!  Thanks much!"

Some readers, particularly some with little background in entomology, probably overlooked the import of the Editor's introduction to each of the above papers, noting that they dealt with "potential hazards that could be posed by indiscriminate consumption of insects." Actually, it was our intention to include with each article a follow-up interview with the authors in order to immediately clarify the specific relevance of toxins in those insect groups that have been widely used as food by humans.  Unfortunately, it didn't happen because of time and space limitations.  But, we're finally getting to it with some additional discussion of sequestered compounds below and of insect-synthesized compounds in the next issue of the Newsletter.

The articles by Berenbaum and Blum show clearly why it is not a good idea to collect insects willy-nilly for eating.  In cultures that have routinely used insects as food for centuries, however, one would expect that those species presenting a substantial toxic threat would have been screened out long ago simply on the basis of user experience.  Berenbaum presented a "fairly comprehensive" list of species known to sequester hostplant toxins, 62 species belonging to 49 genera in 18 families.  When one checks this list against a list of the nearly 400 genera containing species that are used as food, it is not surprising to find that there is only one solid overlap, the genus Zonocerus in the grasshopper family Pyrgomorphidae.

Professor Berenbaum noted that only a "tiny fraction" of herbivorous insects have been studied for their sequestering characteristics.  But even when data become available on a greater number and variety of species, it seems logical to expect that long user experience will be found to have effectively screened out most of the toxic species. 

There are only two described species of Zonocerus.  Berenbaum's table shows Z. variegatus as sequestering pyrrolizidine alkaloids from Leguminosae and Z. elegans sequestering cannabinoids from Cannabinaceae.  Z. variegatus is eaten roasted in southern Nigeria, where large dry season populations may develop (A.E. Akingbohungbe, pers. comm. 1988; Fasoranti and Ajiboye 1993), and Z. elegans, which has a wide distribution in Africa, was reported by Quin (1959) as a food of the Pedi in South Africa.

Berenbaum cautioned about aposematic, or brightly colored species, which frequently are black, red, yellow, orange, or combinations of these colors.  Dutifully, Zonocerus adults (based on Z. elegans) are dark greenish with bold patterns of black, yellow and orange.  Berenbaum also cautioned about conspicuous behavior (such as leisurely flight) being indicative of chemical protection. Again, Zonocerus (Z. elegans) complies.  Both nymphs and adults are sluggish and gregarious, many specimens are short-winged and cannot fly.  Zonocerus goes one step further in trying to warn would be predators not to eat them.  The adults have a characteristic odor which is unpleasant and they are sometimes called "stink grasshoppers" (Hill 1983). 

So, why should they be chosen as food by anybody?  Good question, although not directed at anybody in particular.  What is the physiological basis for the unpleasant odor?  Just guessing, it would seem likely the result of a synthesized chemical rather than one sequestered from a plant. Quin (1959), who reported Z. elegans as food in S. Africa, mentions it as a serious pest of garden plants and says nothing about an odor.  Also, neither Akingbohungbe nor Fasoranti and Ajiboye who discuss Z. variegatus as food in Nigeria mention anything about an unpleasant odor.  I don't recall either that Scholtz and Holm (1985) mention odor in relation to Z. elegans in southern Africa although I don't have their book in hand at the moment.  According to Hill (1983), plants attacked by Z. elegans include cassava, finger millet, cocoa, castor, coffee, cotton, sweet potato and a variety of weeds, and it is an especially severe pest on crops in the seedling stage.  Can it be that insect populations having a wide hostplant range vary in toxicity (and odor?) from one geographic area to another, depending on which host plants are mainly utilized?  Or depending on different toxin concentrations in the same plant species in different regions?  Professor Berenbaum pointed out, citing as an example Asclepias syriaca and the monarch butterfly in North America, that specific plant species vary widely in the chemical composition of their tissues and thus the insects that eat those plants may "show tremendous variability in their toxin content." Or, in the case of odor, is itjust that ies not a deterrent as it isn't in the case of several species of "stink bugs" of the hemipteran family Pentatomidae used in parts of Asia and elsewhere? 

There is one other overlap of food insects with Berenbaum's list, but it's rather a technicality.  Berenbaum lists Arctia caja (family Arctiidae) as sequestering cardenolides from Asclepiadaceae and Scrophumaceae, and pyrrolizidine alkaloids from Compositae.  Powers (1877) reported that larvae of two species of Arctia, known as "shek" were eaten by the Nishinam of Pacer County, California.  According to Amett (1985), however, A. caja americans is the only North American representative of the genus, so the observation may well represent a misidentification by Powers.  The larva of A. caja is a general feeder, according to Arnett. 

Professor Berenbaum noted that "there are insect families in which sequestration is certainly more widespread than in most" and mentioned specifically the Lygaeidae (seed bugs, Hemiptera), Aphididae (aphids) and Coccoidea (scales, Homoptera), Chrysomelidae

  SEE BERENBAUM, P. 6

Berenbaum (from page five)

(leaf beetles, Coleoptera), and "a host of caterpillars" in the Papilionidae, Nymphalidae, Arctiidae and Pieridae (Lepidoptera).  Again, it is interesting that reported food insects are almost absent from these families.  So far as known to the editor, among the hundreds and hundreds of species reported as food, none are in the Lygaeidae or Papilionidae, only one each in the Aphididae (honeydew in western N. America), Chrysomelidae (in Mexico), Nymphalidae (in Zaire) and Arctiidae (the questionable record discussed above), one or two in the Coccoidea (Australia) and two in the Pieridae (Mexico).  Larvae of one of the Mexican pierids, Eucheira socialis, feeds on madrone (Arbutus spp.) leaves which contain glycosides.  The pupae are roasted and sometimes mixed with corn gruel by the Tarahumara Indians, and Tarahumara who eat large numbers of the pupae sometimes vomit or develop headaches (see Kevan and Bye 1991; these studies were summarized in the July 1992 and July 1993 issues of the Newsletter).

Another point made by Berenbaum was that, for entomophages it is nice to know where your potential insect meal last dined.  A case report of a poisoning in S. Africa puts an exclamation point at the end of that advice.  Steyn (I 962) described the case history of a 4-year-old Swazi child who died after eating a single grasshopper of the species, Phymateus leprosus.  This species is not eaten by adult Swazis because they know it to be poisonous.  Rabbits dosed by stomach-tube with freshly minced grasshoppers exhibited toxic symptoms of the heart and respiratory system.  It was not determined whether the toxicity was caused by the insect itself or by toxic plant material that it had ingested.  P. leprosus often feeds on the leaves of wild cotton or milk-bush (Asclepias fruticosa) and on Ceylon rose (Nerium oleander), and both plants are active heart poisons.

And, by the way, May, you mentioned that insects that sequester certain hostplant toxins might be used as flavoring agents, stimulants, or even as narcotics.  There is evidence that certain Indian tribes ingested ants (accompanied with fasting) to produce hallucinogenic or mind-altering effects and a number of potentially mind-altering substances have been isolated from ant toxins.  I have no idea whether the toxins are sequestered or synthesized, but by way of contributing to the preventive drug control effort, I shall refrain from revealing the identity of the ants.

And, finally, a specific question.  Humans are the only predators that cook most of the food they eat.  Although some insects are eaten raw, most are fried, roasted or cooked in some other manner.  What happens to these sequestered plant toxins when they are subjected to the heat of cooking?

Professor Berenbaum:

In response to your specific question, as far as I know, nobody has specifically investigated the fate of sequestered plant toxins in fried, roasted, or otherwise processed food insects; I Would venture to guess, however, that cooking has the same effect on plant chemicals whether they are housed in plant resin ducts or insect storage glands.  Leopold and Ardrey (I 972) described three ways that cooking acts to remove toxic substances from plant foods: by denaturing protein-

aceous toxins, by accelerating oxidative decomposition at high temperatures, and by dissolving or diluting toxins.  Cyanogens were specifically cited as compounds that are oxidized by cooking; inasmuch as these compounds are sequestered from hostplants by some insects (e.g., Seirarctia echo), cooking would likely drive down the toxic glycoside content of the sequesterers much as it does plant tissue.  How ancient the practice of cooking insects is has not been established, as least as far as I can tell; I haven't found any anthropological references to charred insect remains in archaeological sites.  How well these remains would be preserved, however, is anyone's guess; humans have been cooking for at least 300,000 years.  It is important to note, though, that not all plant chemicals are rendered nontoxic by cooking; furanocoumarins, photocarcinogenic and phototoxic components of edible parsnip (Pastinaca saliva) are completed unaffected by boiling or microwaving, a fact that does little to bolster the already rather minimal appeal of parsnip as a vegetable (Ivie et al 198 1).

It should be mentioned as well that other forms of food preparation that reduce toxicity of plant materials have their parallels in the processing of insect food items.  For example, plant foods are rendered more palatable and less toxic by selective removal of certain parts that are particularly high in toxin content; peeling potatoes, for example, removes a substantial portion of the total glycoalkaloid content of the tubers.  Although insects are rarely peeled before eating (no doubt a laborious and time-consuming task only for the agile-fingered), they are often chopped and sectioned in such a way that noxious glands and their contents can be removed.

Finally, with respect to the comment that "humans are the only predators that cook most of the food they eat"--not to quibble, but there is at least one other entomophagous species that engages in a process similar in several ways to cooking.  Loggerhead shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus) impale insect and other prey on large thorns or barbed wire prior to consuming it.  Yosef and Whitman (1992) observed these birds in central Florida impaling Romelea guttata, a large and highly poisonous lubber grasshopper, and returning after one or two days to eat them.  These grasshoppers, which sequester a staggering array of plant chemicals from their many hosts as well as manufacture endogenous defensive compounds, are repellent and even outright toxic to most vertebrate predators in the area.  Indeed, these insects are distasteful to the birds while they are alive; only after ageing one to two days do these insects become palatable.  Considering daytime temperatures in central Florida between June and September, when these tests were done, it is entirely possible that these rubbers lost their toxicity due to the fact they were spit-roasted in the sun. 

References 

Arnett, R-H. 1985.  American Insects: A Handbook of the Insects of America North of Mexico.  Florence, Kentucky: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Fasoranti, J.O.; Ajiboye, D.O. 1993.  Some edible insects of Kwara State, Nigeria.  Amer.  Entomologist 39(2):113-116.

  SEE BERENBAUM, P. 8  

A Baltimore Sun article (minus two photos) reprinted by permission, The Baltimore Sun, Copyright, 1994. 

One man's pest is another's delicacy  
People swarm to sample bugs   

by Shirley Leung, Sun Staff Writer 

Something spicy and greasy filled the air at the Oregon Ridge Nature Center yesterday afternoon. 

"Smell's good," said 9-year-old Caitlin O'Connor as she reached over to grab a handful of "caterpillar crunch," a pan-fried mix of pecans, cumin, cayenne pepper--and mealworms.  "The bad thing is that I don't like nuts.  So I'll just eat the bug," she said, popping the inch-long rust-colored worm into her mouth.  "Tastes like Japanese food-Japanese chicken," she exclaimed.  Twenty-five other culinary daredevils tasted "caterpillar crunch," "wax-worm corn fritters" and "chocolate-covered crickets" at a demonstration at the Cockeysville nature center yesterday.  Another session on eating bugs will be conducted today.  "If you think about it, a mealworm is not really different from a small shrimp," explained Adrienne van den Beemt, 19, an Oregon Ridge counselor and amateur bug chef. "Like anything, they take a bit getting used to.  Some say mealworms taste like creamy shrimp." 

The idea of a two-hour seminar on how to catch and eat bugs was Ms. van den Beemt's concoction.  For the past six months, she has researched the subject and become an avid reader of The Food Insects Newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 

To prepare worm dishes, Ms. van den Beemt advised freezing them first.  "This is the most humane way to kill them," she said.  She advised taking the legs and the wings off crickets and grasshoppers because they're "scratchy." "What about the fuzz on caterpillar? someone asked.  "They should be singed off," said Ms. van den Beemt.  The insects are then added to regular recipes--like adding nuts to cookie batter.  For example, the "wax-worm corn fritters" are just like plain fritters with soft white caterpillars poking out of them.  Waxworms "were kind of juicy--like a fruit candy with juice in the middle," said Brentt Holmes, 14, of Columbia.  "When you bite into them, all the juice comes out." 

Yesterday's session had families swiping butterfly nets in a stalky field to catch grasshoppers and crickets.  But the variety of insects tasted--the mealworms, wax-worms and crickets--all can be bought from animal food stores, says Ms. van den Beemt. 

Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects, is common around the world except in the United States and Europe, say entomologists, Since humans have roamed the earth, they have been eating insects, ranging from termites in Africa to honeybees in Nepal to grasshoppers in Japan. 

An issue of The Food Insect Newsletter reports that 80 percent of the worlds population eats insects intentionally--and 100 percent eat then unintentionally.  Most insects are eaten as a way to supplement  

diets and are even considered delicious.  By weight, termites, grasshoppers, caterpillars, weevils, houseflies and spiders are better sources of protein than beef, chicken, pork or lamb, according to the Entomological Society of America.  Insects are also sanitary, low in cholesterol and low in fat. 

"Americans have negative impressions of insects and chances are you aren't going to eat them," says Justin Schmidt, an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona.  "Now you look at crabs and lobsters.  Do you know what they eat?  Everything that dies," notes Mr. Schmidt.  "But you won't eat a mealworm that eats grass and nice things we eat." 

But not all bugs are edible: nor are they tasty.  "Insects that taste bad, they usually advertise it," warned Ms. van den Beemt. "If you see an insect with colors, chances are you don't want to pop it in your mouth." So, for example, avoid monarch butterflies, she advised. 

Yesterday's bug bites gained followers.  Many asked for recipes and places to buy bugs.  "I like the idea of getting food from another source," said Phyllis Bomeman of Timonium, who brought her two grandchildren along.  "All three [recipes] were very good.  The corn fritters reminded me a lot of soft crabs.  It's good eating."  

It was an all-around great day for edible insects at Oregon Ridge Nature Center 

We received some interesting follow-up on the Oregon Ridge event.  To show that edible bug news generated in Maryland is also edible bug news in Utah, Tim Bowers-Irons of Salt Lake City sent an abbreviated version of the Sun article which he clipped from the Deseret News of August 8-9.  That it was a truly quality day at Oregon Ridge was further indicated in a letter from someone who attended the event: 

Dear Dr. DeFoliart: 

My wife and I enjoyed a splendid lecture and field trip and demonstration on Food Insects at the Oregon Ridge Nature Center leading me to ask for whatever number of past, present and future copies of your newsletter that can be provided and mailed.... This 2 hour exercise was conducted by a 19 yr-old counselor at the park named Adrienne van den Beemt with a degree of knowledge, charm, enthusiasm and audience captivation, free of self consciousness, that was barely believable to me, who has been on the giving and receiving end of scientific teaching since 1935.  Keep an eye on this gal. 

Sincerely, (signed)  
William E. Grose  
Assoc.  Prof.  Surgery, Emeritus  
Johns Hopkins Med School  

And finally, a letter dated August 16 from the organizer herself: 

SEE OREGON RIDGE, P. 8

Oregon Ridge (from page seven)

Dear Dr. DeFoliart,

Hello!  May name is Adrienne van den Beemt, and I am a second year student at the University of Michigan as well as a Naturalist at the Oregon Ridge Nature Center in Cockeysville, Maryland.

The weekend of August 6 and 7, 1994, I held a program called "Eatin' Bugs at Oregon Ridge".  I had been a little nervous about conducting this program because I had never heard nor seen such a program run before.  It went splendidly--with the invaluable help of your Food Insects Newsletter.  I credit your publication with 90 percent of the information and recipes that I shared.  Our nature center had issues back to 1988, and I must have gone through at least twenty newsletters during my research.  I really do think that there are no better references around!  They were absolutely wonderful--fascinating--and I have recommended The Food Insects Newsletter to everyone who lets me! 

Around 30 people each day sampled Caterpillar Crunch, Worm Fritters, and Chocolate-Covered Crickets.  People loved the cuisine--plates were licked clean, and I had several requests for recipes.  The Baltimore Sun ran a story on August 7, 1994, which I have enclosed.  The next day I found out that the story had been picked up by the Associated Press. Since then, I have been bombarded with calls from radio stations from Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Montana, and even from Austria and South Africa!    

The program was an absolute success!  I'd like to thank you wholeheartedly  for your help and commend you on such a unique and resourceful newsletter…

Sincerely, (signed)  
Adrienne van den Beemt

Commercial sources of edible insects 

In the November 1992 Newsletter we published the addresses and telephone numbers of seven commercial sources from which crickets, mealworms or waxworms can be ordered.  For new readers who have come aboard since then or will come aboard in the future, it seems a good idea to re-list one or two of these in each or nearly each issue when and as space permits.  Starting alphabetically:

Armstrong's Cricket Farm  
PO Box 125  
West Monroe LA 71294-0125  
For orders: 1-800-345-8778.  
For inquiries: 318-387-6000.  
Available: crickets. 

Bassetts Cricket Ranch  
535 North Lover's Lane  
Visalia CA 93292  
1-800-634-2445.  
Available: crickets, mealworms.

Berenbaum (from page six)

Hill, D.S. 1983.  Agricultural Insect Pests of the Tropics and Their Control.  London: Cambridge Univ.  Press.

Ivie, G.W., HoIt, D.L., Ivey, M.D. 1981.Natural toxic ants in human foods: psoralens in raw and cooked parsnip root. Science 213:909-910.

Kevan, PJ.; Bye, R.A. 199 1. The natural history, sociobiology, and ethnobiology of Eucheira socialis Westwood (Lepidoptera:Pieridae), a unique and little-known butterfly from Mexico.  The Entomologist 110(4):1146-1165.

Leopold,A.C.,Ardrey,R. 1972.Toxic substances in plants and the food habits of early man.  Science 176:512-514.

Powers, S. 1877.  Tribes of California.  Contributions to North American Ethnology.  Vol.  HI.  U.S. Geograph. & Geol.  Surv. of Rocky Mtn Region, Dept' Interior, pp. 430-431.

Quin, P.J. 1959.  Foods and Feeding Habits of the Pedi.  Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Univ.  Press.

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Berenbaum:  One more note, your plan for preventing drug abuse by not revealing the identity of ants that produce mind-altering substances may come to naught.  Recently the Associated Press wire service ran a  

story about ant abuse in Dubai, listing not only the commercial product name--Sarnaseem--but also the going price.

Ed.:    Dr. Berenbaum enclosed a news clipping of the AP story which was sent to her by a friend in California.  The story must have had wide circulation.  We also received copies from Dr. John Medler who saw it in The Honolulu Advertiser of September 11, and from Ed Abbot who saw it in the San Francisco Chronicle, same date.  So it may be hard to keep this cat from getting out of the bag.  As printed in the Advertiser:

Teens in Dubai get high on ants

Manama, Bahrain (AP) - Even the lowly ant isn't safe