Hunting Grasshoppers!

Yesterday morning it was cloudy and even sprinkled a little here and there of rain. It was so nice that after I took Nikki to work at 9 a.m. I came home to do some yard work out front. I noticed my lavender bush was ready for some trimming as all of the blossoms had dried out. While I was cutting the bush a big grasshopper jumped out of the bush. I told Charlotte and Alice about it and they came out to see. They watched him jump around for a little bit until they lost sight of him in the other bushes and flowers by our front door. Charlotte had mentioned wishing she had a bug catcher and cage to catch the grasshopper in. The boys used to have little bug cages they made in scouts years ago but apparently they gave them away. I tried to think of what I would do when I was a kid and then thought of finding a shoe box to make a cage out of. Fortunately I still had my box from buying my shoes last month so that's what we used! First we taped up the holes on the bottom with duct tape. Then taped the holes on the top with clear tape. After that we covered the top with plastic wrap and taped it down except for one corner. We had to make sure the grasshopper we caught would have air so I had the girls poke lots of holes in the plastic using a push pin and again on the top of the box because the lid was attached so it might be closed sometimes.

After the box was finished we went for a walk on the path by the canal behind our home because I figured that would be a good spot to find them. The path goes a ways but then stops because there's a field. We walked clear to the field and didn't see any grasshoppers but we did see a bunch of dragon flies. I let the two neighbor kids come with us as well. We brought plastic cups for catching the bugs and a piece of cardboard to slide underneath the cup. I did find a few grasshoppers in the field but they kept flying too far away from me so we gave up and started walking back. I kept scanning the sides as we walked and finally about halfway back I saw a grasshopper jump towards the fence and then fall down into a spider web. How lucky is that? I used the cup to cover him and then slid the cardboard under. Charlotte brought her box over and I let her take over on getting the grasshopper into the box. She was successful and very happy about it! She named him Polka Dot. We did see one more grasshopper after that but I was not fast enough to get him before he flew away over the fence.

Charlotte, Alice and our neighbor friends Bryson and Brooklyn.

If you zoom in you can see him on the right side of the box. He's a light brown color with spots.

Charlotte brought him inside to her room for a little while after we got home but I eventually made her take him outside to the back yard. He spent the afternoon out there and by evening he wasn't hopping around much, so the kids opened the cage to let him out but he wouldn't fly or hop out. He was still alive though. They decided to put him in the grass where he stayed until this morning. We were surprised to see him still there. When Charlotte said he was still out there this morning I asked if he was dead but she said no. Sure enough, he was still alive but just sitting in the grass. I got him on the end of a stick and was able to get a picture of him with the girls. Charlotte later put him on the fence and now he is gone. I told Charlotte that Polka Dot is happy that he didn't die and that we actually saved him because he had fallen in the spider web. If we hadn't got him out of the web then the spider would have gotten him. That made Charlotte happy to hear.

Here's Polka Dot and the girls. Charlotte had not brushed her hair yesterday or today before taking pictures, lol.