Lucky the Grasshopper

I've always thought of my dad as very in tune with nature. He's always had this fascination with surviving in the wild (he's an avid fan of Man vs. Wild). He also has this insane ability to catch insects with his bare hands. Which brings me to another childhood memory...

My dad used to catch grasshoppers while he was on his route at work. He'd skillfully grab them with his hands and tuck them away into an envelope or other handy container. Then he'd bring them home and place them on my desk. So, when I got ready to start my homework, I'd find a mysterious envelope there waiting for me. Thinking it was probably money, I'd excitedly rip it open, allowing the captive little bugger to jump out at my face. Of course I'd always scream in shock.

My dad would do this on a regular basis. When I started catching on, he'd put them in different places--I guess you could say he's a little bit of a prankster.

I'd always try to keep the grasshoppers as pets, even though my dad always insisted the right thing to do was to let them go. Actually, I think he told me to either set them free or feed them to Susie, our Rhode Island Red hen. I remember one particularly spunky grasshopper that I named Lucky. He got this name because while I was "playing" with him (I'm not sure how you play with a grasshopper) in the backyard, my dog Brownie snatched him in her mouth and almost swallowed him whole. Lucky survived the whole ordeal, but with some considerable injuries. He could no longer hop. I felt so guilty about my recklessness that I became determined to nurse him back to health. Allison and I smashed up pieces of grass and fed him through a syringe, no easy task, I might add.

Then I remember being upset with our parents because they wouldn't let us take the injured grasshopper with us to the restaurant we were going to. We did anyway. We brought him sandwiched in a pair of pie tins from Marie Callendar's, lined with a comfy layer of grass. When my mom found out we snuck him into Tita Glory's Volvo, she was upset because we couldn't bring the pie tins back for the 10 cent discount, haha. Now that I think about it, we left the poor guy in the hot car while we ate. He would've been better off at the house.

Surprisingly, the little guy even survived our shoddy veterinary care. He made a full recovery. Then he got lost in my room. I found him about a month later, after coming to terms with his probable death. I found him, very much alive, hiding behind my blinds while I was cleaning my window. I got so freaked out by his sudden reappearance that I instinctively sprayed him with the Windex I had in hand.

After surviving a treacherous journey in my dad's work bag, a vicious dog attack, the sub-standard medical care, the unrelenting heat of a closed car during a California heat wave, and finally, severe chemical burns by Windex, I decided it was time to set Lucky free. In retrospect, Lucky probably wasn't an appropriate name for him.