The latest invaders, as we have been reporting, are harlequin ladbybirds from the USA, bigger and brasher than our own relatively demure native species – and before that we have had armies of ants, squadrons of giant spiders, and goose-stepping panzer divisions of angry German wasps.
But over the years, flat old agricultural Cambridgeshire has attracted more than its fair share of insect intruders. In the 1960s, carrot fly devastated crops in the eastern part of the county; in the 70s, warble fly, which attacks cattle, was a major threat to farmers; and in the 80s, the infamous Colarado beetle turned up unannounced, prompting a huge scare for the Cambridgeshire potato crop, one of the biggest in Britain.
People living in the villages of East and West Perry, close to Grafham Water, are used to insects that breed near the water, but in 1970, they were unable to leave their homes for fear of being covered from head to foot in mosquitoes. When they swarmed, villagers described the phenomenon as ‘a thick brown fog’. Experts from the Grafham Water Authority said the building of the massive reservoir, just a few years earlier, had “disturbed the balance of nature”, and the advice was that in time things would settle down.
Alien invaders in the form of ‘woolly bears’, black-headed grubs, caused havoc in 1971. Their food of choice was jumpers, scarves and other woollen garments, and huge numbers of them found their way into wardrobes and airing cupboards.
Hot weather in the 1990s, in 1995 and 1998 particularly, triggered an insect breeding frenzy, with bed bugs and bluebottles a major problem. At George Pateman Court in Cambridge, a block of flats run by the Cambridge Housing Society, residents refused to pay their rent until an infestation of ‘super bugs’, which blanketed their bedclothes at night, was eradicated.
In 1972, heart transplants at Papworth Hospital had to be suspended after Pharaoh’s ants got into the operating theatres. The ants are so tiny they are hardly visible to the naked eye, and doctors were worried patients’ wounds might be contaminated. It took more than a fortnight for pest control teams to get rid of them.
Cambridge was hit by the Great Plague of Greenfly in 1979. Shop fronts were turned green with aphid slime, car windscreens were covered, and people took to wearing face masks, dark glasses and headgear to keep the insects from getting up noses, in eyes and in the hair.
Our photos here recollect the great Grafham mozzie plague of 1970; one of the biggest wasp nests ever found in Cambridge, at Chesterton in 1969; a young man covered in locusts in 1981 (does anyone know the story behind the picture?); and a monster spider from 1990.
The children in the colour photo are welcoming back one insect that got away in 2001 – a three-inch long hissing cockroach, the classroom pet at Milton Road Junior School, which somehow escaped and was on the run for six weeks before being recaptured lurking in a waste bin.
Have you got any creepy-crawly tales? Get in touch by emailing firstname.lastname@example.org, or writing to Memories, Newsroom, Cambridge News, Winship Road, Cambridge CB24 6BQ.