Lubbers

Last summer, we closed on our house on June 30. We drove down, and I brought a carload of stuff to leave at the house - open canisters of flour and such that the movers wouldn't move, and some plants.

When we actually arrived on July 25, someone had completely eaten one of the amaryllis I had left in its pot, including the bulb. I immediately suspected the giant prehistoric grasshoppers known as lubbers:



Although I have heard various urban legends about them (my favorite, that they are from an escaped UGA experiment!) they are actually a local native species, according to my Field Guide to the Southeast. And they are ravenous. They ate all the cucumbers I planted last summer too. They are slow and don't fly, so they are fairly easy to catch and/or kill, but on the other hand they are immense and kind of creepy and gross to squish.

This weekend a set of eggs must have hatched, because there was a cluster of babies in the front yard. I killed them relentlessly, as Michael laughed at me and Evelyn tried to persuade me they were harmless. Mess with my garden and you are going down, bugs.