Trekkychick

So as I drove home from work today, I listened to OPB to catch up on the latest news from around the world; the BP oil spill, Sarah Palin’s newest book (I’m Roguer Than You Are, or something), and the most recent threat to mankind: Grasshoppers.

Wait…..what?

Yes, Readers, grasshoppers are the latest terrorists in a slew of enemies threatening to bring down the northwestern region of this great nation. According to OPB, a severe grasshopper invasion has been headed straight for the Northwest, predicted to be the most formidable grasshopper infestation since the Great Grasshopper Hostilities of 1933 when grasshoppers became privy to the fact that humans were covering them in chocolate and eating them. Legend has it that during the GGH, Grasshoppers became so tyrannical that they stopped hopping and began jumping from place to place, and some even went so far as to begin hopping in non-grassy terrain, like on soil and sidewalks. (They also apparently munched on a few crops, obliterating farmers’ harvests, or something, whatever.)

As frightening as our green adversaries sound, there is hope on the horizon. OPB reports that the northwest’s rainy late-May weather, which differs from previous years’ rainy late-May weather in no way whatsoever but apparently bears mention anyway, is well-timed as it provides a cold and damp climate that is ideal for breeding diseases and fungi that could knock baby grasshoppers right out of the grassy field. If these late-May weather patterns remain consistent, grasshoppers’ numbers should be dropping over the next few years, which is OPB’s nice way of saying frogs won’t be the only things croaking in the near future.

Now that’s just mean. Grasshoppers aren’t my favorite insect, either, and certainly, I wouldn’t keep one as a pet, anymore, but to report on their demise as a celebratory story (“But enough about the unstoppable oil gushing through the Gulf for the next five years, here’s Bob with a heartwearming tale of death to grasshoppers”) simply doesn’t seem fair to the little green guys. I mean, it’s not like the grasshoppers are hurting anybody (except organic and sustainable farmers’ crops, farmers’ livelihoods, and the food supply).

I think there’s an easy alternative to all of this grasshopposition that simply hasn’t been considered due to the strained relations that have endured since the Great Grasshopper Hostilities of 1933. Why not offer grasshoppers an incentive not to chew on crops meant for human consumption? (Hear me out on this one. My ideas are highly underrated—-to date, nobody has actually used one of them. I’m flummoxed.) We all know that grasshoppers are vegetarian. And we all know that nobody actually eats brussels sprouts. Yet brussels sprouts continue to be grown, to sit on grocery store shelves under the pretenses that somebody, somewhere, will actually buy them, and they continue to rot, unbought. Why not just place brussels sprouts in areas of high grasshopper traffic, with a sign that says, “Grasshopper Food.” Grasshoppers will surely see the sign and forgo their usual diet of farmers’ crops in favor of a nutritious brussels sprout. Crops will flourish, humans and grasshoppers will co-exist peacefully, and my family will stop trying to serve brussels sprouts during Christmas dinner.

–Troi out