It鈥檚 grasshopper season in Colorado. That鈥檚 good news for birds and praying mantises, who enjoy eating them. But I鈥檓 freaked out about it. You might say I鈥檓 hopping mad.
Last spring my wife and I were driving toward Craig, Colorado, when Highway13 turned slick and brownish red under our tires. It looked like a festering wound. Then we noticed that the road surface was moving.
I pulled over to investigate. We were surrounded by a popcorn effect of crickets, hopping away from our stomping feet. We ran back to the car and slammed the doors. One of the crickets hopped into the car with us, and provoked mad slapping and screaming, which ended only when the cricket jumped out the window. I seriously considered doing the same thing.
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I hate grasshoppers. They eat our lettuce before we get a chance to. Unless, that is, they manage to stow away on a leaf, and rear up mid-salad to horrify us. Plus, they look like little dinosaurs, bringing a velociraptor vibe to our otherwise idyllic garden.
As we roared up blood-red Highway13, we googled 鈥済rasshoppers smeared on the road in Colorado.鈥� We learned that our nemesis was a Mormon cricket鈥搒o called because it mowed down the first crops planted by Latter Day Saints in Utah. Legend has it that a flock of seagulls swept in and saved the day, by crunching them down like potato chips. Come to think of it, that makes me loathe seagulls, too.
Entomologists insist that Mormon crickets are closer to katydids, but I say they鈥檙e grasshoppers, and I say to hell with grasshoppers.
It鈥檚 been a good year for grasshoppers in Colorado, which means it鈥檚 a bad year for the rest of us. In July, that raised my antennae: 鈥�'Hopperpocalypse,鈥� the headline read. 鈥淐olorado farmers say this year's grasshopper infestation the worst in generations.鈥� It turns out that 'hoppers love hot, dry conditions, unlike the rest of us. So while we huddle indoors with the AC turned up, they鈥檙e mowing down our gardens, food crops, and cattle fodder. Their greedy mandibles are stealing food from our mouths!
At our house, when the going gets tough, my wife takes a course at Colorado State University. Her pest professor was Whitney Cranshaw, who co-authored the CSU extension鈥檚 fact-sheet on 'hoppers. I read the whole thing, and basically, there鈥檚 no hope. Insecticides that kill them also harm helpful pollinators, and once the 鈥榟opper nymphs reach adulthood, as they have now, they鈥檙e practically invincible. The extension service does recommend hand-picking them off your plants, or cutting them in half with garden shears.
Two things: First off, ewwwwww.
Second: Hand-pick them how? Hoppers have a better vertical leap than Simone Biles.
One possibility that I wholly endorse: Grinding 鈥榟opper corpses into flour. 鈥楬oppers are manna from nutrition heaven, with lots of protein and amino acids, and they have five times more vitamin C than orange juice. They鈥檙e available online in powdered form, as well as roasted, with cinnamon. Plus they鈥檙e an option for safe snacking. How many could you possibly eat? These are insects, not blueberries.
As it stands, my only revenge is to try and run 鈥榟oppers down on Fort Collins鈥� bike paths. But my skinny tires are no match for this mobile menace. It鈥檚 like riding through a popcorn popper. They鈥檙e genetically programmed to thwart me!
In his story Big Two-Hearted River, Ernest Hemingway writes of a fisherman who discovers a brood of grasshoppers that has evolved from green to black, after a fire darkens their landscape. Does that sound like anyplace you know?
鈥淕o ahead, grasshopper,鈥� the protagonist says, releasing one he鈥檇 caught. 鈥淔ly away somewhere.鈥�
Preferably, Nebraska.
Peter Moore is a writer and cartoonist who lives in Fort Collins. You can see more of his work at kunc.org.
