The hoppers are back!

He's in there. You've got to look hard, but you'll see him--or her. He's pretty much right in the middle, just now approaching that chunky pink quartzite. He's one of millions, literally, out in the fields around the pond south of town a couple of afternoons ago. They regularly come out of the woodwork about this time of year. When I sat down, they didn't scurry out of the way like they did when I was walking, and this young man or woman crept up in the grass beneath my feet and did the courtesy of  allowing a photograph. 

Let me bring him up closer. He's camera-shy.

Maybe he's trans, I don't know. But I'm stymied about proper pronoun use, without a clue as to traditional grasshopper gender identification. What I do know--and what's readily convincing right now anywhere in the region, is that whatever each of them is, they do very well at locating each other. Right now, they're legion. 

This year's batch are no more than an inch long, and while their appetites may well be as legendary as they're meatier cousins, their effects are not so readily discernable. 

Try this on for size:

The worst grasshopper visitation we had was in July, 1876. One Sunday morning father and mother and I went to town to church. The small grain had been harvested and the corn all along the way was a most beautiful, dark green. When we were about a mile from town a slight shade seemed to come over the sun; when we looked up for the cause, we saw millions of grasshoppers slowly dropping to the ground. They came down in such numbers that they clung two or three deep to every green thing. The people knew that nothing in the way of corn or gardens could escape such devastating hordes and they were very much discouraged. To add to their troubles, the Presbyterian minister announced his intention to resign. He, no doubt, thought he was justified. 

I was pretty small at that time and didn't understand what it all meant, but I do know that as we drove home that afternoon, the cornfields looked as they would in December after the cattle had fed on them--not a green shred left. The asparagus stems, too, were equally bare. The onions were eaten down to the very roots. Of the whole garden, there was, in fact, nothing left but a double petunia, which grandmother had put a tub over. So ravenous were the pests that they even ate the cotton mosquito netting that covered the windows. 

Lucy Hewitt, "Early Days in Dawson County."

The only link between past and present manifestations is the dozens you can raise with every last step right now. But no one I know considers them an abomination right now. Most of us barely know they're around. 

They are. 

Environmentalists, who are blessed with gentle souls, will tell you what they're good for, what they do in the great balance of things. Let me summarize: they poop. They eat a variety of green things--grasses, plants--and then, well, leave the refuse behind, tiny as they are, incidental as their poop must be. 

I'll grant you that the character I photographed above is no behemoth, but every last one of them know how to slam meals. They eat half their weight every day. Let me see--if that were my diet, I'd spend most of life eating, and the other half--well, you know. They do, and all that blessing is left behind, and what scientists call "fecal matter" is oh-so-good for the earth.

Here's yet another at his or her calling on rosier terrain. Soon enough, he will leave deposited his or her bit of precious sustenance. 

Thus, the wholesome "circle of life."

I think a good Calvinist can turn anything into a sermon.