Writing about parasites on the body-politic reminds me of an on-going infestation closer home. In fact, in my home. In my garden, to be precise.
I’m talking about the eastern lubber grasshopper, which, as grasshoppers go, is a rather fine looking specimen: Yellow, with black and red markings, he grows to a plump three inches, which is about three inches more than I care to see.
I didn’t know the name until recently, but the face is familiar from a couple of months back, when I saw a whiskered gold-and-black snout peering out from behind a window-bar. Being generally well-disposed to all God’s creatures outside the human world, except cockroaches and slimy things- that-go-squish, I let him hop along without interfering.
Too bad. It turns out that the eastern lubber is a nasty pest that defies the birds around here because he gives off an evil-tasting juice when he’s crushed. That explains why he can hop along without flying. He knows no one wants to eat him. The books say he hisses when he’s cornered, but so far I haven’t seen any sign of it, and if he does, I hiss pretty well myself.
What I’ve caught the lubber doing so far is bad enough, hiss or not. He and his mates turned a stately crinum – a purple Queen Emma, at that – into a moth-eaten wreck, with broken leaves and chewed-up buds. Some tender bromeliads now look like half-eaten salad and even the Black Magic Ti’s in the corner of the yard are pitted and pock-marked.
All while I was researching politics and not paying attention.
It turns out that there’s not much that can be done to eastern lubbers, once full-grown. The time to have caught the suckers was in the spring, when they were newly-hatched.
Too bad that then they were cute little bugs that just begged for Jain treatment.
Summers in a lush, semi-tropical yard take the Jain out of you and put in a Japanese killer.
Look out! Samurai lawn-woman!
Oh-oh-oh..
If you’re old enough to remember John Belushi, you know what I”m talking about.
Seriously, though, in gardening, blood-lust is the way to go.
Chemicals kill too many things that need to live and organic baits aren’t fast enough, although I’m told something called Nolo bait works slowly to cut back the lubber population.
I took the cave-woman route and prowled around in the afternoon, bathed in sweat in 90-plus humidity, brick in one hand, a long bamboo stick in the other, nudging and prodding leaves to uncover my prey.
Lubbers, fortunately, are not just show-boats who stick out with their gaudy ensemble, they’re cocky, stupid show-boats, who don’t even think to hide.
Prodded with a stick, they slide, swing under a stem, and hop, sometimes quick enough to get away for a few seconds, but downright lethargic next to your average, in-shape cockroach.
Unlike cockroaches, lubbers die easily. A sharp prod disembowels them. One hit of a brick, and their head and chest cave in.
Filled with loathing and rage on behalf of my violated crinum, I rubbed the edge of the brick vindictively back and forth through my victim’s entrails to make sure that there would be no last-minute heroics.
He didn’t die alone.
Over the past couple of days, a reign of terror has been unleashed on the lubber population here. Fully a dozen have met a gruesome fate at my hands, with little remorse shown.
I intend to smash and eviscerate every single future lubber I see, with no quarter given for age or sex.
Somewhere in all this, I’m sure, there’s a lesson about karma, human-life, and the powers-that-be, to whom we’re not much more than garden pests and useless feeders to be exterminated.
But, right now, I’m not in the mood to hear it.
I’ve got me some lubbers to hunt.