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PatchWork |
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PatchWork |
Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
Grasshopper Invasion is in Full Force
The washing was done and I decided to by-pass the dryer and hang the sheets
and towels and assorted clothing on the wire clothes lines behind the house. I said to
myself that I really liked the smell of sun dried sheets but in reality an excuse to be
outside was part of it. Once out on the green grass , with the sweet smell of Mimosa
blooms floating on the morning breeze, I thought to myself that I had never seen a more
perfect day.
I reached in my old cloth clothes pin bag, the only one I have had in
49 years of marriage, and picked up a handful of wooden pins, some of which were my
mother’s. As I fastened a soft yellow sheet to the line, that good feeling inside
grew even better. I envisioned Mother hanging the washing on the line years ago with some
of those same pins. I used to love to help her and remember that she taught me to be
orderly by hanging all the socks together, the pillow cases together, and so on. She would
say to me, “There’s a place for everything and everything in its place.
That’s the order of the world.”
It’s a phrase that I learned well. To this day I like
order in my life because it makes me feel comfortable to see beds made, dishes washed and
put away. What I’d like to know is what place do grasshoppers have in this world. The
thought came to me as I finished hanging up the washing and had to dump grasshoppers out
of my wicker clothes basket. The little hoppers were jumping up and down in the grass and
chomping on the tree leaves, creating a sorry sight for anybody who prefers grass, trees,
and flowers to bare ground.
Our herd of guineas has foraged on bugs for years, keeping our
place clear of unwanted bugs, ticks, and apparently fleas, since we don’t have any.
But three years of severe drought has caused the grasshopper to multiply faster than our
guineas capicity to digest them. Any day I expect to see our faithful harvesters lying on
their backs, feet in the air just stuffed to where they can’t eat one more hopper.
Lately I’m been contemplating sending an SOS to the
seagulls for help. You remember how they flew in by the thousands to rid the
Mormons’s Utah farms of the destructive insects. I believe that was the furtherest
inland that seagulls ever flew but they cleaned out the grasshoppers and took off back to
the ocean.
At least this invasion of grasshoppers has taken our worries
off fire ants for awhile. Now if we could just figure out a way to stage a war between
ants and hoppers....... Maybe the hoppers could threaten the ants’ food supply.
However I don’t know what fire ants eat except human legs and electrical equipment
and I think hoppers aren’t interested in those two.