Do geese eat grasshoppers?

   There are grasshoppers in my yard bigger than my cat!  They try to jump on my leg for a free ride around the yard, but I do not let that happen. I do not like their sticky legs.  I do not like their little tight lips, nor their bugged out eyes.  They are tricky little varmints.  They can land on a light bulb and not fall off before  propelling themselves off in any direction, except to the direction I thought they were going to jump.

They are not afraid of humans.  Insect spray does not harm them.  They eat everything in sight except weeds.   They do not eat weeds. They travel in packs!  They go from a tiny thing the size of a gnat into a 3 inch long giant grasshopper in seven minutes! 

If it were not for the fact that they are the most destructive things on planet Earth, they would be fascinating creatures.  They can fly.  They can take off from a dead standstill and become airborne in a blur.  They can jump further than a kangaroo.  I think they fly.  They are both aerodynamic and waterproof.  I think they chew tobacco, although I do not know where they get it!

I do not know where they sleep, or if they sleep.  I know I go out early in the morning and there is no sign of them, and suddenly the air is full of them.  Insecticide does not phase them.  I did buy something once that the man told me makes them sterile.  Birth control for grasshoppers??  That did not work either. I think it actually increased the horde!

I have seen my mother goose try to catch and eat one, but she failed in that endeavor, so I am guessing the geese prefer grain.

So, I am praying for frost.  It will not kill them, but it slows them down.  Back in the days of the pioneers, they talked of "herds of locusts, that blocked out the sun!"  They don't fool me.  It was those damn grasshoppers!  

They can put a man on the moon, but they cannot find a spray to eliminate the grasshoppers.  So what can we do to get rid of them?

 My answer to this is , "who knows?"  Just pull up my big girl pants and move on!  Winter will come someday!

Sunshine and grasshoppers!

 We are in the middle of a heat wave....again.  This probably does not come as any big surprise to most of you.  While the heat is almost unbearable, I have another problem out here in the country.  That problem is grasshoppers.  They are every where!  Or at least they seem to be everywhere.  I could rephrase that and say, "they are everywhere I try to walk!"

Grasshoppers are fascinating little creatures, to say the very least.  They have barbs or something on there feet or legs that is very disturbing to my skin when they land on me.  Now, granted, they do not make contact with me very often, but once was enough.  The fact that they are ugly as sin does not help at all!  So when one does land on me there is a lot of jumping and screaming going on from my body.  

Now I have a lot of weeds out here on my little acre.  I try to keep them at a manageable height with my mower called a weed whacker.  It has 2 high wheels in the back and a nose out the front with a string trimmer.  This thing is very powerful and can sling a rock the size of a lemon through the garage window in a split second, but it does not harm grasshoppers!  Nothing harms grasshoppers!

Now, I speak as an expert on grasshoppers because I have tried everything!  I even got a bag of something that is supposed to make them sterile.  Now, it will not kill them and it takes a season to get them all sterilized, or so the instructions on the bag said.  So the spray that was supposed to kill them only made them bigger and meaner!  The sterilant appears to be more of an aphrodisiac then any means of birth control!

One would think that with a ratio of 40 grasshoppers per every square foot of weeds I have that at the very least I would get rid of the weeds, but that is not happening either.  I have no idea what these beasts actually eat.  They do not trim the grass.  They do not eat the weeds.  The trees still have their leaves and the geese eat the garbage.  

I have thought about moving in to town, but I can not find an apartment or house that will allow me to have 7 adult geese.  And on that subject, how long does a goose live?  My friend looked it up on google.  Now google knows everything!!  It told us, a goose lives 16-17 years under ideal conditions.  Ok.  I got these geese for Bret when he was 6 or 7 years old and he is 31 now.  You do the math!  Hell, even Google is jerking my chain!

So, as I try to type with the cat laying across the keyboard and the grasshoppers laying in wait right outside the door, I am trying to count my blessings.  Actually, they are many!  I have a computer that works, a refrigerator full of food, and friends who love me!

Peace!  

I had a second thought....

Have you ever had a thought and decided that it was sheer brilliance?  And then you actually thought that one through to an illogical conclusion?  Then you had a second thought that beat hell out of that first thought!  Well, I am here to tell you that my world is full of those thoughts.  Most of my day is spent thinking second thoughts until nightfall comes and I wonder just what in the hell I was thinking.  Maybe it is best that I not think at all!  Like now.

I spent yesterday with Michael Wenzel, a realtor with Keller Williams Realty.  He is a delightful man and honest to the core.  I am not real sure I am quite ready to sell, but when I do, he is my man!  He told me apartments are few and far between, nursing homes are full and houses are selling about as fast as they are put on the market.  This tells me, I might want to hold on to what I have until I fall and break the proverbial hip!  I have to live somewhere and this one is paid for so that holds a certain charm.

Now Michael is a very well spoken man and anyone who knows me, knows that I have the first thing I ever touched in life and when I spend 30 years collecting, something is going to get full!  When he talked about showing the house, he said "You might want to open it up a bit.  That makes it look bigger. " He could have said , "You need to get a dumpster in here!"  I will consult with my kids over the next couple weeks and come to some sort of conclusion about where I will go if I sell this place.  There is a lot to be said for just "sheltering in place"  like they say when a storm is coming.

But, back to the title of this post.  I shudder to think how many times I have had an absolutely brilliant idea and then thought it through to the conclusion that I should probably be locked up for my own safety!  I can think of several husbands that were fleeting instances of my lapses in good judgment!  Coulda', woulda', shoulda', are words that do not appear in a dictionary, but probably oughta'.

I planted an Apricot tree out behind the house 25 years ago.  Monday I started removing limbs with my bow saw.  I am going to need to call a tree man.  Another instance of not thinking things through to a logical conclusion.  That little Mulberry tree that came up in the middle of the old fashioned rose bush is another instance.  I could have taken a pair of nippers to it, but now it is chain saw material.  Those sprayers that come on automatically in the garden are going to need removed because I was burning weeds and got to close to one.  Oh, yeah, and that blackberry bush with the 11 inch razor pointed thorns is going to need removed also.

 My mother once told me "You are your own worst enemy!" I did not understand what she meant all those years ago, but I am beginning to see a pattern developing here!  I am thinking that someone ought to just come and throw a net over me and drag me off to the loony bin, wherever that might be.  I assume someone would feed me and give me a place to sleep at night!  And there is that word "assume".  Kenneth explained that one to me once.  "Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

And there you go.  More ramblings of a mad woman!  Have a good day!

So, getting pretty tired of talking about my past, let's do yours!

http://www.firstgiving.com/loumercer

Today is the last day for me to do this and I am not going to ask you for anything.  Will just leave that there for anyone who might be interested.

Now, talking about my good old days back in grade school and even high school was a kind of hoot and there is many memories that are actually humorous, sad, learning experiences and such, but we can just touch on those "I remember when" moments lightly in the future. But as you see I grew up.  No one is going to set around and read about me falling madly in love, having children, divorces, job, moving cross country, and all this because I am not going to write all that down.

I read something the other day that really made an impact on me.  It was another blog I follow.  It went something like this: "If he was so great, where is he today?  I he was such a butt hole, why did you marry him? If you would rather be there, why are you here?"  Then I had another friend explain it so I could understand it.  It is called "free rent in the noggin and that is not good."  I shall now interpret that into terms that you (I) can understand.  Something in the past that dwells in your mind and takes your mind off the present day is taking up space in your head.  Can not think of the present or future because that memory is getting free rent in your brain space.  It has to do nothing to stay there, except to be.

So, like the every changing woman I have become, I am cleaning out all the bad memories, all the dead weight, and all the frivolous things that don't make two whoops in hell (like my momma used to say).  Oh, I will remember my heritage and the strong deep roots that have brought me to the point I am today.  I will pass that on to my children and grandchildren, but they do not need to know every step I took to get to this day.  They only need to know that this is where I am.  I am in Colorado and I shall stay in Colorado.  I have very little family here as they are mostly back East, but I have friends,  mountains, blue skies and my home.  I have my church and my God.

There are people who count on me here.  If I were not here I am sure someone would step up and take my place, but they would never be me.  For some reason God saw fit to deliver me to this particular spot 33 years ago, and like a noxious weed seed that fell on fertile ground, I have taken root and flourished!  I am happy here and I am sure this is where I shall stay all the days of my life.  Who knows what the good Lord has in store for this little atom that is but a piece of space dust?  Stick around and find out!