My brain was wandering today, and it wandered back to the Arizona desert, to a two day stretch when our attention was consumed by grasshoppers.
For one reason or another, on these two particular days, there were grasshoppers absolutely everywhere. They were apparently in the midst of some sort of migration. Also, they were apparently in the midst of mating season, too.
Turgid bronze ‘hoppers the size of a large man’s thumb dragged themselves across the road in an insect parody of that old Disney nature program about the lemmings who migrated off a cliff. Moreover, many were locked in coitus as they scrabbled across the hot asphalt. In fact, at points it was a regular grasshopper orgy, and an obscene daisy-chain of rutting insects would be stalled out, twitching most disgustingly on the shoulder of the road.
I tried, whenever possible, to avoid running over the stolidly marching (or languorously humping) grasshoppers. Besides being opposed to unnecessary slaughter of innocent creatures, I found the sound and resultant goo-splosion beyond nauseating.
I remember, while we were dealing with the grasshopper leg of our journey, thinking that I should write about it here the next time we got to a computer, but then the next time we did was after we’d caught a train back to KC and had gotten into more hospitable countryside, and the macabre/sexually-explicit exodus was temporarily wiped from my mind. But as with anything so hellish and bizarre, it re-surfaced and I decided I’d share it today, just to commit it to writing and also to totally gross out anybody who is still checking up on my ridiculous site. It was certainly not something you’d see every day, and thank whatever gods may be for that!