What Happened to the Grasshoppers?

When I was young and looking for something to do on a summer's day, my mother often sent us out with a jar to catch grasshoppers.  We ran around the grass patches of our city home, stirring up the grasshoppers and trying to capture them in the jam jars lovingly prepared with perforated tops and blades of grass inside.  It seems to me that we seldom see grasshoppers any more.  Have they fallen victim to the chemicals every suburban family seems to lavish on their lawns?

And this year I noticed many fewer cicadas singing - is it just the lack of hot weather or are they leaving us too?

Let's look and listen at GE and remember to get the girls looking and listening too.

 Here's a poem by John Keats about the sounds of these little creatures.  Don't be turned off by the author - the poem is a simple one.

The Cricket and the Grasshopper - John Keats

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury, – he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of the earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket – by John Keats (1795-1821)
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury, – he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of the earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
- See more at: http://www.wartimehousewife.com/page/2/#sthash.sHrhRLhn.dpuf

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket – by John Keats (1795-1821)
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the grasshopper’s – he takes the lead
In summer luxury, – he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of the earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
- See more at: http://www.wartimehousewife.com/page/2/#sthash.sHrhRLhn.dpuf