Hoppers

09.17.07

I generally don’t give much though to grasshoppers.  I mean, I vaguely remember finding one now and then as a kid, catching it, having it spit on me, saying, “Ew, gross,” and letting it go again.  I don’t have a particular childhood memory centered on grasshoppers.  I don’t remember them being in my pool, in the car, or sunning themselves by the hundreds on the slide of my swing set.  Maybe because I had a metal slide.  (Fried grasshoppers, anyone?)

 

I definitely don’t remember anything quite like the “Grasshopper Run.”

 

What is the Grasshopper Run, you ask? 

 

I’ll tell you.

 

First let me set the scene.

 

A black-topped driveway leads to a peaceful 2-story white house with blue shutters and a wind-chime on the back door that tinkles.  A nice large yard has mostly green grass and a swing set with swings, a slide, and a climbing rope.  There’s a pool in the yard covered with a tarp.  Beyond the pool is a field of high grass and wild flowers.  Idyllic, really.

 

A child stands poised at the edge of the driveway, her merry eyes so blue they glitter like sapphires when she laughs.  They’re glittering now as she grins with anticipation and delight.  “Say, ‘ready, set, go’ Mom!  Say it, say it!”

 

“Ready… set… are you ready?”

 

“Yes!” she shrieks.

 

“Are you reeeaally ready?”

 

“Yes!  I’m ready, I’m ready!  Say it, Mom!”

 

“Ready… set… GO!”

 

She leaps into the grass and runs toward the field, grasshoppers popping up by the hundreds with every step, until she’s almost engulfed in a cloud of hoppers.  Her arms flail and giggles and squeals fill the yard.  When she reaches the edge of the field she turns back and hollers, “Did you see that, Mom?  Did you see it?  There’s a million grasshoppers!”

 

There is only one rule for the Grasshopper Run.  And if you think about it for a minute it’s fairly obvious.

 

Keep your mouth closed.

 

I stand on the driveway laughing, every now and again shaking hoppers out of my hair and brushing them off my clothes.  The driveway isn’t exactly a safe zone.  There is no safe zone.  The hoppers are everywhere.  They leap into the house, hitch rides with me in the car, and float in the pool awaiting rescue.  And rescue them we do, several times a day, and finally tarp the pool because we don’t want to be responsible for any drowning grasshoppers.

 

I haven’t had one spit on me yet, which I think is odd, because when I think of the hoppers from my childhood what I remember is weird brownish-orange spit.  They hop.  You catch them.  They spit.  They hop again.  That’s it.

 

I don’t remember clouds of grasshoppers.  Grasshoppers on the house, in the house, on the car, in the car, on my clothes, in my car, leaping, hopping, popping, pooping.  But no spitting.

 

There are more revolting swarms of bugs than grasshoppers, that’s for sure.  Army or Tent Worms – those are gross.  Actually, they are so gross that I think we’ll just be moving right along and not talking about them.  And let’s not talk about the moths they turn into either. 

 

At least hoppers don’t turn into something equally nasty or worse than their original form.  And we do get breaks from them because every few days a crowd of blackbirds descends upon our lawn.  A hundred birds – two hundred – it’s hard to count them as they march across the yard in an oddly organized formation, filling their bellies with hoppers and ruining, for a few days at least, the game of Grasshopper Run.

 

Sometimes plagues of insects are really yucky.  But sometimes they make for an awfully fun race across the lawn.