It was on a cool Tuesday afternoon that the residents of Sinanché, a small town in southeastern Mexico, first heard the hissing.

Looking out their windows, the leaves of the fruit trees in their back gardens had been licked clean, while chewed-on lemons, oranges and hoya covered the grass.

But not a single one of Sinanché’s some 3,100 residents had to look far for the culprit – or culprits, rather.

All they had to do was look up.

Miles-long clouds of locusts have been blanketing the skies above the state of Yucatán this week, flying through shopping plazas, smacking into the windows of apartment complexes and gobbling up anything green in local parks.

 
 

Social media users and the Mexican press both asked the same question: Is this a sign the world is coming to an end?

Locusts invade the sky in Merida, Mexico, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. Many pointed out that it was not the first time that a phenomenon of this type has occurred. (CEN)
Thousands of locusts have invaded the skies of southeastern Mexico this week (Picture: CEN)

In Exodus, locusts were the eighth of 10 plagues sent to carpet Egypt.

One regional outlet even quoted the Book of Revelation 9:3, which reads: ‘And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

‘And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.’

Except these locusts certainly have certainly hurt any and every green thing in sight.