Attack of the Giant Man-Eating Invaders

First off I just want to put a reminder here for anyone who wants to enter the "Dark Arts Give Away". Just click this "Dark Arts" link to go to the post and throw your name in the hat!

Okay, on to business....so as you all know it's summertime. And summertime in FLA means BUGS! All sorts of bugs and yard pests reside here and unfortunately we have no choice but to begrudgingly happily co-exist with them. And bugs of any size are creepy in my book, (most especially spiders)....but what happens when you mix bugs with steroids? Well you get the stuff of nightmares, that's what happens. At least MY nightmares anyway.

On Sunday, there was a creature in our yard that belongs in the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. And it's an insect that just totally freaks me out, try hard as I might to appreciate it. My husband is from Georgia and they call them "Georgia Thumpers" up there. But I call them GIANT freaks of nature Grasshoppers. Or better yet...Giant Man-eating Grasshoppers!!! Officially they are named "Eastern Lubbers". Now keep in mind that the average grasshopper may grow to 2" in length, and then consider that this specimen is about 5-6" when he is spread out. I kid you not. And there were 2 of these big scary monsters hanging out on our trampoline. And as this image falsely accurately details....he was fanged, hungry and sizing us up for consumption.

They startle you when you see them because, I'm sorry, but it's just not normal or right for a 6 legged insect to be as big as your hand. But then you remember that they are just placid gargantuan little herbivores who don't bite, sting or otherwise do anything more harmful than devour your children feed on your garden. And truthfully, this variety is actually rather pretty and colorful in shades of yellow, orange and red. So after our weekend at Harry Potter's Wizarding World, my son was insistent that he wanted a pet OWL! And I explained to him at length that we cannot just go to the local pet store and get an owl....so he was in want of something to call a pet of his very own. That's when it hit me that maybe we could placate him with a Giant Man-Eating pet grasshopper. It worked...he was sufficiently happy with his new freak show specimen pet to lay off the owl! So to Walmart we went to buy this grasshopper a large 10 gallon tank of his very own. Of course I had to photograph "Blade" (that's his name) because I was sure none of you would believe me about how big he is. But the photos really don't even adequately convey his ginormous size. Then as fate would have it as I went searching on-line to determine what kind of grasshopper he was, I came across some old 'giant grasshopper' photos by F.D. Conrad of Garden City, Kansas. His photos depict the grasshoppers as not only BIG, but life sized and sometimes MONSTER sized. Now considering it was 1937, I do wonder how he managed to make those shots without the help of Photoshop. But I thought they were pretty clever and funny, no?. Apparently I'm not the only one who exaggerates describes these grasshoppers as the mammoth monsters they really are. :o)
Images 1-4 © 2010 Wendy Amdahl
Images 5-6 © 1937 F.D. Conrad