I was born in a small town, and we moved to the “big” city when I was nine years old. Consequently, I have seen my share of grasshoppers, I remember there being a lot of them around, but not nearly as many as I’ve seen in the past day or so in Saskatoon. It’s crazy.

Apparently grasshoppers can’t drink water, so they have to eat plants to get their moisture. This makes it quite odd to see bucketloads of them in downtown Saskatoon, hopping all over the place. There just aren’t that many plants to go around here. They actually had the sidewalk sweeping machines out this morning to clear all the grasshoppers (mostly dead ones) off of the sidewalk. Normally those machines are only seen after it snows.

All that being said, they don’t bother me in the least. I find them humorous. It’s not like they’re going to bite me, and give me Mad Grasshoppers Disease or anything like that. Yeah, they’re bugs, but so what. That’s why I found it amusing to watch all the women wearing skirts downtown yesterday. You can bet that they’re not wearing skirts today. I can understand not liking a grasshopper jumping up your skirt, but it’s just amusing to me to watch the fear in some people’s eyes when they walk by a grasshopper. You’re 1000 times it’s size fer crying out loud. When they start putting on crush proof body armour and building weapons of mass destruction, you can fear them. Jumping around into walls, people, traffic - these aren’t actions to be fearful of.

Ah well, there don’t seem to be as many downtown today as there were yesterday.

What would be nice is if they could get the air conditioning fixed here - it’s been down since sometime yesterday morning, and apparently won’t be fixed until after 3:00. It’s getting a little hot in here, so I have to try not to move too much. My fingers aren’t even cold, which they usually are after a half day’s typing.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Hey Flanders, who put that bug up your butt?” - Homer