It is a fine sunny fall day here. I went out about 9am to mow. Yes, you still mow in Houston after mid October. The grass just gets a bit shaggy, and it also helps mulch the leaves and pine needles.
In our back yard, as I mowed along with our noisy gas-guzzling Toro, I saw the most beautiful silvery thing with 8 wings lift up off the grassy turf. At first I thought it was a dragonfly.
Then, another and another.
I kept mowing and got to the center of our yard. This is where water often sits, shade is often abundant from our towering pine trees and pine needles gently shelter as they scatter-fall all year round.
As I began to transverse with the mower little blades of grass began jumping. But the jumped *before* the blades or wind from the mower got to them. They were little grasshoppers.
I was beginning to sweat, tired of my job and decided to push on. They are just incects. But as I swung around and got back to the center patch again I saw dozens and dozens of the fragile, pale green creatures jump. Some flew away, the ones with real wings. Some jumped high and long and got clear. Other hobbled and could not avoid the path of the mower.
I thought of those storybooks I used to read to my boys of the the sweet animals of the forest who are devestated by the sound of the developer's bulldozers.... oh the power of literatue.
I put myself in the grasshoppers' place. Ok, I thought to myself, do they have brains? Can they feel pain? Are they just cartlidge with a rustic nervous system?
I am not sure, but I cut power to the mower and started on the front yard instead.
But, as I pushed out into the yard I saw this wasp hover-zooming over the tips of the grass...
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