Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Grasshopper Eggs

Please come back tomorrow if you don't enjoy close-ups of insect life!

Okay, if you're still here, check out this amazing thing that we saw on our front lawn this afternoon:


Her abdomen was stuck into the ground because she was right in the middle of laying her eggs!  We watched her doing it for a couple of minutes, and when she left, this tiny pile of pink foam was all that we could see:


The foam is the plug to an egg case that she buried about an inch under ground.

I can't believe that we got to see this today, having just finished  On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder, in which there are incredible descriptions of grasshoppers and their eggs.  After that dramatic story, I had to reassure the boys that there will not be a grasshopper plague in Los Angeles when this egg case hatches!

3 comments:

  1. cool.. will you be documenting the subsequent cycle like a dedicated national geo documentary maker?

    i once took a photo of a smaller grasshopper on the back on a larger one!

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  2. You will definitely see more pictures if we get to watch them hatch!

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  3. thats great because my son had a pet grasshopper and she died after she laid her eggs so now we dont know what to do

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