The Multitudes of August

Okay, it's not a plague on the front step, at least not here, front yard, front sidewalk. What?--just seven of the little buggers catching some early afternoon rays, something they have to do, I'm told, although more on that later.

I am greatly anguished to admit that we may have ten thousand grasshoppers in the garden out back, a few million in the prairie even farther from the house, or us, and untold more in the forty acres of corn beyond that, although the word is they only devour the leaves from the stalks on the edges of the fields. Nonetheless, for the first time since we've moved to the country, this August, they're a force to be reckoned with. 

A couple of millions is a haphazard guess. But, who's counting? Not me. All I know is that in all of the stories I've ever read about the great grasshopper wars during the onslaught of Rocky Mountain locusts--or whatever you care to call them--I've never really read about the profane and sinful anger they're capable of nurturing in your mind and heart. If there were any fewer, I'd go on a killing spree. Yesterday, when I mowed the lawn, I ended hundreds of life stories--or the mower did, and it was gratifying, a sheer delight. I told myself that the Grasshopper Times, the daily tabloid some of the enterprising have to publish, ran banner headlines above the not-to-believed story of the old man and a voracious red Toro who killed thousands of innocents. 

Happily too. I wish I'd done in more.

Perfectly beautiful, hearty, and colorful, our marigolds, for whatever reason went first. 

I couldn't pull the darn thing, but my gardening partner did. What's left, cadaver-wise, is now rudely buried amid grass clippings at the Alton dump. Marigolds!--innocence and beauty, destroyed.  

Those heavy-duty mandibles don't seem to able to burrow beneath the rugged rinds and into the sweet meat of the melons. The hoppers leave scars, but that's it. They work at digging in but eventually, just throw in the towel, leaving little more damage than a scar. 

But they eat the tar out of the plants, leave them all beyond recovery. Still, somehow--the Lord willing--we may yet have a crop. 

Although they appear to eat everything, the cone flowers that, this year especially, have come to dominate the backyard, somehow hold up against the hopper swarms. 

It's hard to know from the shot whether the suffering these guys are undergoing is grasshopper-driven, or just the vale-of-tears thing--alas, the season's o'er. But the leaves appear unchewed. 

I asked a creation-care friend about that, and he told me they're relatively untouched because cone flowers are as native as the hoppers. "They evolved together," he told me. 

That's right--"evolved." fine Christian man explaining things by evolution. The marigolds don't have a couple million year history in the prairie, I guess. Hence, they're first fruits. It's a Darwin thing, he says.

And he also told me that hoppers need to maintain body heat to operate, which is why, at the end of the day this time of year, they sun themselves on sidewalks or wherever (see top-of-the-page photo) seeking to absorb sufficient solar power to live and gorge themselves on my garden some more. 

What's enough to make me think again about taking up residence at the Home is that tens of thousands of them each are laying a couple thousand eggs. That's truly Hitchcockian.

Pray for an early frost. They need to die.