While magic underpants was our first preference for Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech topics, our secret second was the Mormon cricket, a species of “bug” out West-ish. The Mormon cricket has swarmed numerous small burgs and hamlets with its polygamous agenda over the years, and it too refuses to acknowledge that waterboarding is torture. After the jump, a brief history of the flip-flopping creature, as well as some disturbing footage of what happens When Mormon Crickets Attack!!!!

Wonkette spent months researching the Mormon cricket and has concluded the following. (And by “spent months researching” we mean “went to its Wikipedia page and copy-pasted”):

The so-called Mormon cricket (Anabrus simplex) is actually a shieldbacked katydid, and not a cricket at all. Mormon crickets are large insects that can grow to almost three inches in length. They live throughout western North America in rangelands dominated by sagebrush and forbs. The Mormon cricket is flightless, but capable of traveling up to two kilometers a day in its swarming phase, during which it is a serious agricultural pest and traffic hazard.

[…]

Tradition tells of a story where the first Mormon settlement in Utah was saved from famine by gulls eating hordes of Mormon crickets that had been destroying their first wheat crop; hence the name of the insect. California Gulls are known to relocate to desert areas to feed on Mormon cricket swarms, although their effectiveness in controlling infestations is thought to be minimal.

So now if Mitt Romney offers all cabinet positions to California Gulls, we’ll know that its centuries-old debt payment in the form of cronyism.

Look at what those early Mormon settlers had to deal with, for Mormon Christ’s sake:

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Mormon Cricket [Wikipedia]
Mormon Crickets: the Swarm that ate Austin, Nevada [YouTube]