“As Henry stepped out of the door, he noticed a peculiar cloud in the west, too light in color to be rain, or even dust. He called Rosie to the door to look.” Henry and Rosie Ise, homesteaders in northern Kansas, faced a grave challenge coming from the land itself: “Grasshoppers--millions, billions of them--soon covered the ground in a seething, fluttering mass, their jaws constantly at work.”