A couple weeks ago our church put on its annual Oktoberfest at the farm of one of our members. Since I was on the couch, which now bears a permanent impression of my bum, Hubby took all the kids to go hang out with friends, grandparents (who all go to our church), and various other assorted family members.

Last time we went to our friends’ farm, our family bug catcher Trinity caught two praying mantises, and since she didn’t have her bug box with her, they traveled home with us in a mason jar with holes punched in the lid. Apparently one was a girl and one was a boy because when we arrived home, we had one smug looking mantis sitting next to one decapitated mantis (females behead the males after mating with them).

Recalling that this farm was akin to bug heaven, Trinity wisely brought her bug box this time, intent on some serious insect hunting. Clearly the safari went well because she returned home with a dozen, perhaps a dozen and a half grasshoppers bouncing around in her box. It seems she recruited help this time from among the little gaggle of girls she regularly hangs around with. I’m not sure how she managed that…

They got home late, and Trinity proudly ran in to display her new bug friends to me and announced that she was going to sleep with them. Uh, no. The last bug she decided to sleep with was a giant cricket she caught with my mother (at least half of our bug stories seem to involve my mother somehow). That incident ended with the discovery of an empty bug box in the bedroom right before the little girls climbed into bed, which precipitated 45 minutes of panicked screaming until the bug was found and relocated to the back yard (the cricket had actually chewed through the plastic mesh on the bug box. Since then our boxes have all been hard plastic). This does not induce restful dreaming in small children.

Recalling, the difficulties involved with one bug sharing the bedroom, the thought of eighteen happy grasshoppers escaping into the wild of our second floor was rather harrowing. Plus, I had no intention of waking up to grasshoppers in my bed. The kids ended up releasing the bugs into the bushes of the backyard, where they visited the bugs for several days.

Yesterday, I opened my dish towel drawer to pull out an oven mitt, and a grasshopper jumped from the inside of the drawer to the top, where it paused to stare at me. Argh! Bugs do not belong in my dish towels! The kids were gone, so I got a glass and sent the grasshopper off to the back yard.

This morning I mentioned the incident to Trinity, and she immediately began asking me what it looked like.

“Was it brown with red back legs, because if so that was probably Mr. Hoppy that I caught at the park the other day.”

“Was it green with only one back leg? That was probably….”

Apparently she knows every bug on the block by very detailed description and has given them all names. She was quite disappointed that she wasn’t available to personally escort this one out to the bushes.

As for me, I would be content if Mr. Hoppy stayed out of my kitchen drawers.

Rachel

Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!