By Nicole Diseker
Staff Writer
In the biblical story of Moses, God brought 10 plagues upon the city of Egypt. First there was bloody water, then frogs, gnats, lice, flies… and it just gets worse from there.
This is the year of 2013, and I am beginning to think we have yet another plague on our hands: grasshoppers.
They’re here. They’re there. They’re everywhere. In mass quantities, they inhabit our campus. I walk to class and cringe with each step I take, making the grasshoppers jump in all directions.
It’s not that I don’t like bugs; I’m just not fond of having them spring towards my body. Not to mention the number of grasshopper carcasses scattered across campus sidewalks is mildly unsettling.
Ever since watching “A Bug’s Life” as a child, when I see a grasshopper I think of Kevin Spacey who voiced the character of Hopper.
The ants in this movie, a family-like colony, were forced to pick food for the grasshoppers, leaving barely enough food for themselves. If they failed or stepped out of line in the grasshoppers’ eyes, a brutally violent, mentally unstable grasshopper named Thumper was unleashed upon them.
When I see a grasshopper I think of a demonic Kevin Spacey as Hopper, and his violent minion, Thumper. Pixar knows how to leave a lasting impression on a child.
The invasion doesn’t stop at our campus. It’s the entire world, as we know it.
Walking across a parking lot leaves me feeling like an actor in an old horror movie, but instead of a zombie trying to eat my brains, it’s grasshoppers. No matter how fast I walk they manage to get me. They latch onto my clothes. They flutter through the air like kamikaze pilots. It’s stressful just to leave my home.
The other day, I sat in my car, put it in drive and made my way down the road. As I sang to the radio I felt something touch my leg. Not just something, something with multiple creepy legs.
A grasshopper had snuck into my car and was now attacking me, putting my very life in danger.
I spazzed guys, I freaked out. This beady-eyed devil wouldn’t let go of my leg. As I tried to keep my car from swerving all over the road, I managed to swat the six-legged hazard into the floorboard.
It was that moment I decided… it is them or us.
Is it “global warming?” Is this a sign that bugs are plotting our demise, soon to take over the world, as we know it?
As farfetched as these thoughts may be, science says that animals and insects have a sixth sense about these things. They know if seasons are changing or if we’re about to be hit by a massive storm, even when humans do not. Do the grasshoppers know something we don’t? Is the end near?
I don’t know why they’re here, why there are so many or what it all means… I just want them gone.