Driving in to work, early this morning, I am alerted by the "need gas" light. I've always been one to drive my car to near empty, but these days, with the soaring gas prices, it's typically down to fumes before I actually fill up. I pulled in to the closest (and cheapest) gas station and made my way to the pump. As I begin fueling, something pelted me! I jerk-reacted and realized it was a stunned grasshopper that had just ricocheted off my body. (yuck!)
I am not a big fan of bugs, so to avoid being pelted again, I quickly squashed him. He didn't make much of a get-away attempt. I assumed he was stunned, like me, to encounter such rude interruption to the morning routine, or, like me, he was too groggy at this early hour to really care.
As the dollar signs on the gas pump rolled, a little movement on top of the pump caught my eye. I was jolted into alertness as my eyes fell on about 50 grasshoppers huddling on their metal perch. If I'm honest, I'll admit that fleeing the scene crossed my mind (probably more than once over those next few minutes). This hoarde of grasshoppers seemed to be perking to life as little legs and little heads starting bobbing awake (either that or the scent of their dead cousin had finally overtaken the gas fumes and alerted them of my presence). The lead hopper, we'll call him Bob, came to attention and slowly made a half circle as he turned to literally stare me down. I do believe he had witnessed the atrocious squishing crime. Bob simply sat and stared, pondering his next move. "Come on pump - click off!" I was thinking to myself (apparently it was too early to form lucid thoughts and actually just complete my transaction by removing the pump from my car!)
Bob continued to stare and I began to panic. What if he was telepathically signaling this flurry of hoppers to swarm at me all at once? (I had just read somewhere that these little buggers actually do bite humans, which did nothing for my distaste of bugs, particularly flying bugs). As more hoppers continued to rotate and stare, my thoughts turned to the Egyptians of Old Testament days, enduring the plagues.
Exodus 10:15 says that so many locusts came with this plague that "they covered all the ground until it was black." I don't think I would've functioned well in Egypt during this time. I can't handle a lone kamikaze hopper, let alone hundreds of thousands of them.
So what happened with Bob and his army? Did a dramatic attack ensue? Or was Bob all stare and no bite? Thankfully, he was the latter. Although I was pretty thankful my Fit has a very little gas tank because if I had to stick around to fill up more tha 8 gallons, who knows what Bob was organizing!
Until next time...
