There were a couple pop up storms that rolled through and dumped a couple of inches in our rain collection containers. There was a fair amount of ground lightening so i spent the majority of the time soothing Cashew and trying to convince her we were all going to be fine with one hand while typing on my laptop with the other. I had worked four days straight, running an average of 8 miles per eight hour shift; lifting bags of charcoal, 28 packs of water, deer corn, bags of salt chips, and pulling the weight of bulk carts over the carpeted sections of the floor to get back to the box. My arthritis was killing me. It not only hurt to move, it hurt to be still. I tried to lay stretched out without bending my knees at all. That hurt less. I never admitted to my comrades at work that i was in agony. I didn’t need the young spring chickens having reasons i wasn’t as adequate a worker. However, you’re just damned if you do and damned if you don’t because then they resented me for my time scores. If only they knew how i paid for those time scores every night they wouldn’t have felt the need to punish me further. It was my first day off in 4 days and i decided all that would get done was charging the lawn mower batteries and writing on the lap top while listening to the rain on the tin roof. That’s exactly how productive the day was.
The agricultural termites always made an appearance during humid weather. They had tunnels beneath the whole two acres and it was always a surprise where they would pop up next.
I went to retrieve the trash can from the intersection and stepped right over the biggest grasshopper before i realized what i’d just done. I hurried to step on it. For some reason it moved but did not jump. I smashed it several times before it crunched and then i carried it to the chickens who couldn’t even swallow it in one bite. It was so big that two of them had to pull it apart and each got half because buttercup couldn’t fit it in her beak. That was a gift from God for the chickens. Usually a grasshopper that large could fly 30 feet easy in one jump and i’d never be able to catch up with it before it took off again. I knew that the tool shed would be teeming with pill bugs after the rain as the environment would be dank and humid inside. I headed over there with a cup. Sure enough, the floor was crawling with them. I picked them up one by one and dropped them in the cup. Then i locked the shed up and dumped the cup in the chicken run where the girls feasted. I added a couple of centipedes i found as well. Because i didn’t free range them, i needed to collect the bugs they would normally eat if they were free from the confines of my chicken fort knox, or be forced to buy dried mealworms from the feed store. I preferred to catch the chickens protein rather than buy it. I felt that way it was fresh and didn’t cost me a fortune.
A “Texas sized” grasshopper! 🙂