| Now whether or not you’d be comfortable gently picking one up and admiring its home grown suit of body armour whilst it gazed up at you from the comfort of your hand is debatable. Personally I’m not, but over a period of time I’ve become quite relaxed about rubbing shoulders in the garden with this particular species of alien life-form that probably originated on Sirius Major ‘B’ but reached planet Earth after travelling 30,000 light years across the Universe in some amazing mother ship
before crash landing in the arid desert regions of New Mexico. Other people with less imagination would probably recognise him as possibly an Egyptian Grasshopper but I prefer my theory. |
|
|
|
| I like this guy. He’s a big 35mm in length, he looks reasonably scary, he doesn’t bite and my presence in his immediate vicinity doesn’t appear to bother him in the
slightest so all in all, we get along fine. He does appear to be a bit of a loner although his attraction to others outside of his own species is probably a mute point for
consideration though he probably thinks the same about us. |
|
|
| I’ve never noticed any particular plant damage due to his feeding habits but on just one occasion I caught him nibbling the leaves of a beautiful hybrid rose I’d recently planted. So I moved him! |
|
| Apparently there are in excess of 10,000 recorded species of grasshopper jumping across gardens world-wide but when you consider the number of planets within our own solar system and beyond it all makes sense but where the other 9,999 mother ships touched down is a bit of a mystery. |
| |
|
|
|
| So, be prepared to touch base with this refugee from the BBC’s ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ series of the late 1950’s and pride yourself on your ability to look him in the eye without turning to jelly. Once you’ve mastered the art you can really start to
consider yourself a seasoned Mediterranean gardener who’s at one with the Universe. Oh, and if you can’t see him in your garden I’m willing to bet you’ll certainly be able to hear him! |
|
|
|
| |
|
More from
Phil...
The Mediterranean Difference - A series of articles by Phil Thompson.
|
