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Published: March 05 2012

Buzz Fleischman - Columnist Page Spring has officially sprung in my yard (and maybe yours) and not because the calendar says the season is changing. I saw my first small black grasshoppers today. I froze. (Play the theme from 'Jaws' now)

It's that time of the year when you can almost hear the munching sounds of tiny mouths as they chew through your yesterday, today and tomorrow. I know nature is perfect in its wisdom, but let nature shred someone else's succulents.

I had been hand-watering the new plants, which had been placed so lovingly in a garden where I had also placed small pictures of grasshoppers with a vertical slash through them. I didn't really think my ruse would work because last year something had partially eaten some of the little pictures, and there seemed to be grasshopper spittle in the vicinity. A sure giveaway! They were mocking me like the Koch brothers at a global warming conference.

I don't know what you call a group of grasshoppers. A slew? A herd? There they were, a lot of them, happily eating away. A creature related in any way to any of the seven plagues of Egypt was not welcome in my garden.

Even though grasshoppers are related to the cricket, this in no way helps me relate to a childhood crush for Connie Steven's role as 'Cricket Blake' from the TV series Hawaiian Eye. Maybe that's why I think 'crush' when I see a grasshopper. (I'll have to speak to a professional about that.)

My loathing for anything with an exoskeleton is legendary, and rooted in a traumatic incident at the premier of the movie 'Alien,' involving a large cardboard display of the being.

Don't ask. Back to the garden...

Distracted by nature's feeding frenzy, and as the dark beasts gorged themselves on my succulents, without even thinking I nimbly drew my hand along the slim leaf, snatched them up, threw them on the ground and used my shoe as executioner.

I know nature dictates they'll be back but I hoped those few that escaped would communicate to their brethren about the massacre through a series of leg squeaks or by rubbing their hind femurs against their abdomen. Yes, I looked up grasshoppers in Wikipedia.

High-rise condos are not immune to the scourge. I've heard of adult hoppers leaping upward from balcony to balcony – yes -- and gasping for air in the rarified atmosphere as they ascend to penthouse level. When your Nassella tenuissima starts to disappear at night while you sleep, you've got one who has conquered Everest. Take a photo and then kill it!

You can't put off trying to rid yourself of these pests. They get noticeably larger each day, in my mind growing to the size of a cargo container. It's like they're in training for the Nathan's Coney Island hot dog eating contest and your yard is the biggest hot dog in the world.

I don't know where they go at night, but if they get together with their children around the shelter of a Tripsacum Floridana I hope they gather close and tell the tale of giant creatures with the word 'Neolite' coming down like a smart bomb on poor unsuspecting hatchlings.

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