Grasshoppers

In my last post, I wrote about the lack of sidewalks in Northwest Arkansas.  Now I'm going to flip my tirade and talk about stuff we have too many of.  Namely, the loud screeching plague that is otherwise known as Grasshoppers.

Everywhere I go, I encounter grasshoppers of various shapes and sizes.  Some are bigger than my thumb, some are smaller than a paper clip, and I seem to be in the way of all of them. 

I never really noticed grasshoppers before moving to Walmart Country, perhaps because I lived in a city for a long while, and there are more interesting things to pay attention to in Albuquerque than grasshoppers.  I'm also spending far more time walking around here than I did in Albuquerque.  Point being, I feel like they are everywhere, and I'm starting to resent them.

At first, I found them kind of charming.  They vary in size and color, and I liked their warning noise--sort of like the popping sound of the flame spurts in the Fire Swamp, they warn you when they are nearby.  But over time, their charm has faded and now I just want the frost to come so the grasshoppers die off (also so I can wear boots and not show up to work dripping with sweat, but that is a post for another day).

Doug and I went to get frozen yogurt recently and I recall him stepping in front of me, into the path of a turdy little grasshopper.  It screeched and moved away, thus jumping directly at me.  I admit it freaked me out more than I wish it had.  I've become hyper sensitive to the little buggers, and I don't like it one bit.

I tried googling "grasshoppers 2012" and some lovely people in Alberta, Canada made a 2012 grasshopper forecast map.  I couldn't find one of those for Arkansas, but I did find a few stories suggesting that the dry hot weather is related to an increase in grasshopper populations here compared to normal.  This article calls it a "swarm."

Well, writing this post and venting about my newfound hatred of the grasshopper, in conjunction with a brief web search revealing that this is, in fact, an infestation of the little buggers, makes me feel validated.  Not necessarily better about my walk home (read also the entry about the sidewalks), but at least validated in my perception.