Aesop didn’t paint the grasshopper in a favorable light. While the industrious ant was busy working for its winter stores of food, the useless grasshopper was frittering its time away.
I share Aesop’s opinion of the grasshopper – useless.
Yes, it’s grasshopper vacuuming season for me. If you don’t know what that means, see my previous blog post.
I don’t know what happened this year but we’re experiencing a deluge of the post oak grasshopper like never before.
As they started emerging and began their annual pilgrimage up the sides of my house, I got the Dustbuster out and went to work, lamenting that I don’t have chickens to devour the evil creatures.
But there was a problem.
I couldn’t make it around the first corner of the house before I needed to recharge the battery.
This was my first clue that we might be dealing with a plague more biblical in nature than usual.
I thought it might be time to purchase a new Dustbuster for this purpose, after all, this one has lasted a good three years. $40 for completely organic, non-toxic bug control is not too much to ask even on a yearly basis. But the problem wasn’t the Dustbuster, it was the sheer number of post oak grasshoppers.
The Fixer heard my complaint, suggested that a corded shop vac might work better, and set me up with a hand-held one. This worked great until I needed to empty the contents into the bucket of soapy water, or grasshopper purgatory, as I like to call it. Opening the lid to the small shop vac let the hoppers escape.
A relentless solution finder, The Fixer provided me with the all in one solution of using a large canister wet/dry vac. Filled with an inch or so of water and some dishwashing soap, the hoppers are drowned as soon as they’re vacuumed. He fashioned an extended reach hose, and I was in business.
It took me about an hour and a half to make it around the house once. But with my elongated hose the vacuuming was much easier. Because the grasshoppers eat oak leaves that contain tannins, their frass, or poop, stains surfaces brown. After vacuuming, I use the leaf blower to blow off all the poop from the patios, driveway, and patio furniture.
It was a beautiful solution, problem was, it had to be done at least three times a day. And the hoppers kept on coming! After two more weeks of constant vacuuming and blowing off surfaces, I began to grow weary. The Fixer was weary. And the last straw was when a guest sitting on my patio realized it was raining grasshopper poop.
Surely there was something else that could be done! It seemed no one around me had this problem. At my neighbors’ homes, the post oaks are far enough from the house that they don’t have the grasshoppers all over their outdoor living space.
I contacted the county extension service and the expert at Texas A&M. No one could offer any solution. They don’t even recommend trying to spray with chemicals, not that I would.
One day someone on one of my Facebook native flora groups posted about her grasshopper problem this year. She was in the same county as me and experiencing the same disgusting issue.
Many people commented on her post and most said they’d never heard of the post oak grasshopper or seen it. Most also commented that it was obvious she just needed some chickens or guineas and voila, problem solved. I so understood her pain. You would have to have one chicken per square foot of yard to battle this plague!
And we have birds, birdhouses and bird nests. We have lizards, snakes, and toads. We love and encourage all our wildlife (except grasshoppers) and strive to maintain a balance of nature that generally keeps us from having to intervene. I joined in on the Facebook conversation and tried to explain to the people the difficulty of this grasshopper. We would honestly love some help but please don’t tell us to just get a few chickens. Your understanding of the situation is lacking. After my fellow warrior posted some pictures and we both described our grasshopper zombie apocalypse, they seemed to understand and then the comments ran more towards, “I would have to sell the house and move”.
I became despondent. I didn’t want to step outside the house. The post oak grasshopper begins to die out when the temperatures get hot enough, but these are the best patio sitting days of spring and they were keeping us from enjoying that brief window of opportunity. I was depressed. Every time I wanted to sit, I first had to vacuum and then blow off the poop. It makes it hard to relax. The thought of selling the place seemed almost reasonable.
But then it occurred to me that I was not using the life coaching tools that I have been trying to master when dealing with pain.
My thoughts around this grasshopper circumstance were spinning out of control. I was feeling emotions like shock, horror, sadness, exhaustion, outrage, disbelief, disgust, anger…all because of the post oak grasshopper.
If I needed my circumstance, a plague of grasshoppers, to change for me to be happy, I would never be happy. The grasshoppers aren’t going to change their behavior for me. They’re just going to do what grasshoppers do, going through their life cycles, eating, pooping, mating, laying eggs, and dying.
So, I needed to change my thoughts about the circumstance. And once I opened myself up to different thoughts about them, I was able to start seeing different solutions.
My new Facebook ally had pictures of her trees with an ingenious new weapon for us to add to our arsenal. Duct tape! Wrapping duct tape, sticky side out, around the trees creates a sticky trap to stop their ascent. I showed the Fixer and he immediately fired up the Miata and made a Walmart run. He came back with six rolls of duct tape and went to work. He was delighted by the results and took way too much joy in the discomfort of the hoppers. He ran back to the store for six more rolls. Every other day we checked our traps and changed the tape. I don’t know how many cases of duct tape we’ve gone through, but we’re getting results. The daily house vacuuming chore has decreased tremendously and that should decrease the egg-laying for next year.
I have a big event planned for next May and my out of control thoughts about being in grasshopper hell on the date of the event were not helping me at all. But as I changed my thinking from hopeless to hopeful, I got more ideas.
We can get some patio umbrellas that will shield the hot tub and eating areas from the grasshopper poop shower. Change your thoughts not the circumstance. Grasshoppers are not going to change their behavior.
By using the taping and vacuuming methods, hopefully we will interrupt the life cycle enough to get them to more tolerable levels. Finding ways to shield us from their effects increases our tolerance even more.
And this applies to all situations in life. You could replace the words “post oak grasshopper”, with “chronic pain from arthritis” and my list of emotional reactions would be the same – shock, horror, sadness, exhaustion, outrage, disbelief, disgust, anger…
Like the grasshoppers, the chronic pain of arthritis is a circumstance that’s not going away. Sure, I could change my lifestyle and give up doing everything I love to try to escape my feelings about the pain, but learning to manage them allows me to grow and become mentally stronger. I can become a person who is capable of handling anything.
And there is a silver lining. With the plethora of grasshoppers, we are now seeing an abundance of beneficial insects and wildlife. I’ve never seen as many assassin bugs as I’m seeing this year. They are lined up at the duct tape waiting to feast on grasshoppers. Our local organic gardening guru, The Dirt Doctor, has always espoused that all spiders and wasps are beneficial, and I have the photo that proves it. And I actually saw a squirrel scamper up the tree and pull a grasshopper off the tape and eat it! The beneficial wildlife serves an important role on my gardening staff – and they’re on patrol 24/7!
Additionally, once the grasshoppers die out, these hungry beneficial insects will be scouring my flower and vegetable gardens for aphids, regular grasshoppers, and other menaces bent on destroying my hard work.
The moral of this story is through adversity comes strength.
I don’t know why the plague of grasshoppers had to visit my house, but I can use it as an opportunity for growth instead of an opportunity to run away.
And unlike Aesop’s grasshopper, I will be better prepared for what lies ahead.
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