This is my post for #freewriters 2607 prompt carpet of crushed bugs hosted by @mariannewest.
Even though I despise lubbers, I did not want to kill this one by knocking it from my boat. Nothing should die a slow death by drowning. I saw this one on my boat after I left the ramp so I hoped it would stay there until I came back in from fishing.
It was doing good staying on the floor of my boat and a couple of times hopping on top of the baitwell and back to the floor, but then it climbed to the bow and perched itself between the anchor line puller, I just knew it was going to go overboard I thought about trying to catch it and put it on the floor but that thought was useless because I realized as soon as I got close, it would jump from me. I have picked frogs back up after they jumped from my boat and they are hard to keep your eye on while turning around. I let him be and when I got to the ramp it was still on my boat so I put him in the woods by the ramp.
This is the same grasshoppers as the one above. They are babies, and they are eating machines from this size to the big yellow size they never stop eating my plants. When they first showed up here I tried to kill them by hitting them with a stick until I had a carpet of crushed bugs laying across the yard. I have given up on killing them. I have accepted they are part of nature and let them eat my plants, the plants come back and the lubbers turn to big yellow grasshoppers that are now bigger eating machines that eat different plants than the small ones ate. Eventually, they will lay their eggs in the ground and die, and next Spring we will go through it all over again.
For some reason, when they are not eating, they like to rest on anything that is the color red.
This is a close up of the one that stayed on my boat while I fished. They can grow to be 4 inches long, I have also had them bite me, it only hurts for a second or two. I yell ouch and it is over.
Other than me hitting them with a stick, they have a bird that eats them, even though they are poisonous, this is a smart bird. It is a Loggerhead Shrike. They are the only birds that have figured out how to eat lubbers. They will stick the lubber on a thorn, stick, or even on a piece of barbwire fence and leave it for 3 or 4 days so the toxins leave the lubber's body, then they come back and eat it.
The bird photo was copied from https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+loggerhead+shrikes&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS914US914&oq=what+are++loggerhead+shrikes&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCggAEEUYFhgeGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMggIAhAAGBYYHjINCAMQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAYQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAcQABiiBBiJBTIKCAgQABiiBBiJBTIKCAkQABiABBiiBNIBCjEyNTI4ajBqMTWoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#vhid=05wg4mE77zB8dM&vssid=l
all other photos are mine