This is my post for #freewriters 2768 prompt out of the ordinary hosted by
I saw this grasshopper a few days ago, and then I realized something out of the ordinary, this past spring, I did not have many of my plants destroyed by the baby ones. They are called Lubbers, and I do not know what is different this year than in past years, unless it was the drought we had, because they sure were not here in the numbers they were in the past.
This one is a male, the females have a pointy rear end. Every summer they lay their eggs underground, and the eggs stay there until spring.
When they hatch in the spring, they are ready to eat, and eat they do. I used to wage war on them because there were so many and they ate everything green, but several years ago I gave up on trying to kill them and let them eat to their heart's content. The plants looked bad for a while, but always came back. They would be great if they would only eat weeds.
Lubbers only live for one year, after they lay their eggs, they die. The male lubber's only job is to fertilize the eggs, after he does his job, he dies.
Other than humans, they only have one predator because they can produce a frothy spray from their midsection, which can irritate predators. There is one bird that figured out how to eat lubbers. It is a bird called a loggerhead shrike. It catches a lubber and sticks the grasshopper onto a thorn or other sharp object. It leaves it there for a few days until the toxins are gone, then it comes back and eats it.
Several years ago, I saw this Lubber on my boat after I left the ramp, he liked to ride on the tip of the bow. I never saw the movie, but I am told someone on the Titanic did this same thing.
There is an eastern lubber and a plains lubber. The plains lubber has two sets of eyes, but the eastern ones, like we have, have 5 eyes. I wonder why only five and not six.
The eastern lubber has a few different names, none are flattering, Black Diablo, Devil's Horse, and Graveyard Grasshopper. I have called them worse. Lubber means lazy or clumsy. Its blood is white, and its heart is in its abdomen and is tubular. They say they are not invasive in Florida, I guess whoever made that statement has never seen them in my yard.
