WALL STREET JOURNAL (New York, New York) 22 June 10 Florida Cricket Farm To Liquidate (Melanie Cohen)

The sound of singing crickets may bug some people, but the insects at Lucky Lure Cricket Farm served a great purpose to reptile owners, zoos and Florida theme parks. That is, until a virus destroyed the cricket colonies and forced the farm to file for bankruptcy protection.

Earlier this month, the Leesburg, Fla., cricket farm filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. According to the Orlando Sentinel, owner Beth Payne at first thought the virus was only a bad hatch. Payne, whose farm yielded 9 million dead crickets after the operation was squashed in February, unsuccessfully tried to restart it four times. She even bought thousands of dollars’ worth of chemicals and sterilization equipment. But Lucky Lure, which was considered Florida’s oldest commercial insect farm, finally quit chirping in May.

Drion Boucias, an entomology professor at the University of Florida, told the Sentinel that there’s not a known cure for the virus, which has caused a nationwide shortage of crickets. The densovirus, which has also been blamed for killing off cricket farms in Europe, is species-specific and is nearly impossible to remove, Boucias said.

According to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Orlando, Lucky Lure listed assets of about $1.7 million and debts of $477,000. Its biggest creditor, Bankfirst, is owed more than $380,000.

Payne, who thinks the virus started with a contaminated worm shipment from a farm in California, said the noises the crickets made were like the “pounding of stampeding horses.”

“I think if I heard one now, I’d cry,” she said.
Florida Cricket Farm To Liquidate

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