month or so before they started dying off! They were blowing into Omaha
and actually stopping traffic. The schools were closed for a week or
so. Folks were asked to keep their children and small pets inside.
One especially large one even rang my doorbell. I tried to shut the door
right away, but he grabbed me. I probably would have been eaten, but as he
was dragging me from my home, I realized he was only pulling my leg.
Actually, if you had looked closely at the grasshoppers as they flitted
away from you, you would have seen that they, too, were wearing tiny little
Cornhusker caps and sweaters.
I'll add the Hopper info to the Nebraska Letterboxing website at
http://interbug.com/letterboxing
Thanks for passing through!
Scott
redd@interbug.com
At 03:29 AM 10/21/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 15:33:00 -0400
> From: Doug Gerlach
>Subject: Nebraska Hopper hitchhiker
>
>After finding most of the letterboxes in the great state of Nebraska, and
>without a single hitchhiker in any of them, I decided to create and launch
>one myself. A trip to a grocery store provided the tools I needed -- an
>eraser, a box cutter (the cheapest blade I could find, since I have to
>throw it away before flying back east), ziploc bags, and a Mead notebook. I
>then carved the Nebraska Hopper hitchhiker, commemorating the plague of
>grasshoppers that are currently eating their way through the state.
>
>I encountered the little critters every time I walked through the prairie
>grass -- hundreds and hundreds of them flying and hopping out of the way
>just before I landed each step. I actually think I saw more grasshoppers
>than people wearing red U of N Cornhusker shirts, hats and sweatshirts on
>Saturday (game day) -- though it was a close count, for sure. Let me tell
>you, those Nebraskans are football crazy!