Grasshopper Spit

I have been walking Buster earlier in the morning than I normally do. Partly because it is just so damned nice before the world starts to get busy and partly because I have been working and can’t do it later. Buster doesn’t seem to mind; I guess the things he finds interesting to smell are there early or late.

This morning, the sun was shining on heavy dew that coated the grass. The tiny droplets reflected the light and at times looked like each blade of grass was topped with a diamond. Mostly it looked just like wet grass, but if you squint and turn your head sideways, they were diamonds. Tiny diamonds get your feet just as wet as dew, and Buster looked like he had spent a half hour in a mud puddle.

I was taken back to when I was a kid at my grandmother’s cottage. We would get up early and go exploring with the other kids who had been kicked out of the cottage shortly after they ate breakfast. We would eventually wind up walking through a hayfield that was coated in dew. The hay was near waist high so in no time at all, everything below our waists was soaking wet. We spent a lot of time running through those fields and we ended up wet from head to toe by the time we were done.

I don’t know if any one else remembers, but every now and then there would be something on a stalk of hay that looked as if someone had spit on it. I was assured that it came from grasshoppers in the night, but the person doing the assuring was my brother and I had come to take anything he told me with a grain of salt. I tried to avoid the grasshopper spit, but not always successfully.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Or grasshopper spit.