Grasshopper-pocalypseNow!

My garden is overrun with greedy, munching mandibles, and I’m not hoppy about it. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED & EVEN SPOKEN (!) by PETER MOORE

FOR MORE THAN A YEAR, I’VE BEEN RECORDING COMMENTARIES FOR FRONT RANGE NPR. Whenever something makes me laugh sufficiently, or disturbs me enough, my friends at KUNC invite me into the studio to get it out of my system. It’s better than a therapist’s couch, especially when the target of my loathing or laughter might be out there listening, and I can effect some measure of revenge. The mic is mightier than the sword, and all that. But not in this case, because grasshoppers don’t listen to NPR. It figures. They’re probably Republicans.

Here’s my angry rant against mandibles. They’re coming for you! (If you prefer to hear my voice, trembling with anti-insect rage, you can click here.)

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IT’S GRASSHOPPER SEASON IN COLORADO. That’s good news for birds and praying mantises, who enjoy eating them. But I’m freaked out about it. You might say I’m 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.

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 “grasshoppers smeared on the road in Colorado.” We learned that our nemesis was a Mormon cricket–so 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’re grasshoppers, and I say to hell with grasshoppers.

It’s been a good year for grasshoppers in Colorado, which means it’s a bad year for the rest of us. In July, The Colorado Gazette story that raised my antennae: “'Hopperpocalypse,” the headline read. “Colorado farmers say this year's grasshopper infestation the worst in generations.” 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’re 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’s fact-sheet on 'hoppers. I read the whole thing, and basically, there’s no hope. Insecticides that kill them also harm helpful pollinators, and once the ‘hopper nymphs reach adulthood, as they have now, they’re 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 ‘hopper corpses into flour. ‘Hoppers are manna from nutrition heaven, with lots of protein and amino acids, and they have five times more vitamin C than orange juice. They’re available online in powdered form, as well as roasted, with cinnamon. Plus they’re 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 ‘hoppers down on Fort Collins’ bike paths. But my skinny tires are no match for this mobile menace. It’s like riding through a popcorn popper. They’re 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?

“Go ahead, grasshopper,” the protagonist says, releasing one he’d caught. “Fly away somewhere.”

Preferably, Nebraska.

“If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Or just, you know…