CHAPTER 48
Regal Chapulin, ebony Chapulin, blackest obsidian, black diamond, black jade. Lord Grasshopper your life span is the length of the ripening of the prickly pear fruits, and the mesquite beans that nourish the coyotes who supply you with the smelly potion which protects you.
I never had seen an ebony black grasshopper before. I thought the shiny black creature with elegant thin white stripes on its legs might be a rare species of grasshopper. But when I searched the Internet, I found many wonderful photographs of black grasshoppers (though none as intensely black or marked as beautifully as the grasshopper I saw on the coyote dung). The web search found three million ninety thousand web sites which have the words “black” and “grasshopper” but which have no relation to the jumping insect. There are shoes called “Grasshopper” which appear to be much desired by web-users.
A number of human beings wear elaborate grasshopper costumes of spandex and latex with large Plexiglas helmets or masks that have antennae and saucer eyes. All of them appeared to be men in grasshopper costumes.
If I’d had more endurance I might have searched long enough to find a woman in a grasshopper suit and insect helmet mask, but I only made it to page twenty-three in my web search of the three million ninety thousand pages of sites with the words “black grasshopper” on them.
The costumed grasshopper people look archetypal in an action comic sort of way. Spider-Man meets Galactic Traveler. I wonder if the grasshopper people attend conferences or throw parties in public gardens.
I was reminded of my series of Chapulin’s portraits, and I smiled to think other humans are similarly “arrested” by the regal grasshoppers.
The photographs of the black grasshoppers on the web sites were the efforts of people who appreciated the beauty and size of the creatures. The killers of black grasshoppers posted no photos with their accounts of frenzied assaults on the clouds of insects destroying their gardens.
I had no idea of the significance of black grasshoppers until I read two or three of the web sites maintained by state agricultural departments to help farmers in their states combat the insects. I learned the black lubbers lay waste to all living plants and crops in their path.
One of the web sites concerned a short story by Ernest Hemingway in which the protagonist saw a black grasshopper after a forest fire and believed a green grasshopper was turned black by the fire. Hemingway was mistaken about the fire and the black grasshopper, but he made the black grasshopper a symbol of transformation anyway. He was right about transformation — infestations of the insects quickly turn plants and trees to skeletons.
Lord Chapulin who visited me last year was green, but some black grasshoppers are green; so it may be that Chapulin is only a rare visitor to the desert which explains his stopover to eat rain lilies at my place. He got blown off course on his way to the farms in Yuma and ended up here in the Tucson Mountains. Apparently the black lubbers are around farming areas all the time, although catastrophic infestations occur at seven year intervals.
The most beautiful grasshopper in the world is the color of the rainbow and lives in Madagascar.
It’s August 21. This morning I turned the kitchen faucet and there was no water. My heart sank. I always fear the well will go dry. But it’s been a wet cool summer and our consumption of water was moderate. I know all wells will run dry eventually, but I have a feeling the well is not dry; instead some equipment failure has occurred that’s bound to cost me a thousand.
The electricity reaches the pump but it isn’t pushing any water, the well and pump specialist tells me. This is good news because I thought lightning might have struck the pump, but it still runs. A new pump would be a huge expense. He thinks it is a hole in the pipe. The new pipe and the two workmen and the rig truck won’t be cheap. I may run out of money before the well runs out of water.
I called the water truck man and ordered two loads of about four thousand gallons of water to take care of us until the well pump gets fixed. What a pity I didn’t have my rainwater storage system in place this summer when we got so much rain. My hope is to eventually use rainwater for all my needs except drinking water. I prefer hard water from the well for drinking.
Today was quite a day. First no water; later Old Green, our 1971 Chevy truck, rolled into the ravine. Just after Caz parked it, the transmission slipped out of park and it rolled backwards down the driveway then turned and went down the steep slope in front of the house. Old Green came to rest in the old rusty tin cans and broken glass of an old ranch dump at the bottom of the ravine. The old ranch had a number of dumps, but this one is the biggest.
The run-away pick-up crushed a small saguaro and a number of jojoba bushes and two ocotillos; it hit a big palo verde tree at the bottom where it came to rest. It is a miracle the truck didn’t smash down any of the large two hundred year old saguaro cacti in its plunge.
I had my headphones on and was working on this manuscript when it happened so I didn’t hear anything. I saw by the expression on Caz’s face that something awful had happened. I assumed it had occured in the city and Caz had come to tell me. I never dreamed it had just happened on my driveway. Caz tried to stop the truck from rolling and was skinned up from being dragged by the truck. He might have been killed so we were very lucky after all.
The ocotillos can be replanted, but the rest of the damage, especially to the rocks and dirt, will leave a scar that will last for years, because the desert soil is so thin and fragile here. I don’t want to see any more damage done to the desert, so I am inclined to leave the truck in the ravine with the other ranch refuse. To hire a tow truck to remove it will only do more damage to the desert.
Old Green has a good color to blend in with the surrounding desert bushes and plants. I’d like to paint prickly pear cacti covered in red fruit, and palo verde and catsclaw in bloom on it to camouflage Old Green even more. I’d paint desert shrubs on the windshield and windows so the sun wouldn’t glare off the glass. It would make a perfect reliquary for my ashes when the time comes, but Robert and Caz aren’t amused.
PART FIVE Lord Chapulin
CHAPTER 49
The blue silver clouds pushed in from the south and covered the sky and the eye of the Sun. A hurricane at the edge of the Baja sent us these rain clouds overnight, and now a cool breeze moves out of the southeast from the direction the hurricane took.
As I sat watching the clouds, the white-eared hummingbird came to the feeder on the mesquite tree, but after one taste he flew away — the sugar water was too stale and full of gnats. Ashamed, I immediately took the feeder indoors to wash it and refill it with fresh sugar water.
One morning when I first started my walks, I left before I refilled the hummingbird feeders, and the male white-eared hummingbird followed me on my walk, chirping and scolding me for a mile before he turned back.
The hummingbirds around my house have been here for years yet I know very little about them. All female hummingbirds are similarly colored an iridescent pale emerald green so I haven’t learned to distinguish them. I keep a guidebook handy but so far I can only recognize the male white-eared hummingbird, the male Lucifer hummingbird, and the male Costas hummingbird. The Costas has black and white feathers in his tail.
Once years ago on a cool November morning I found an emerald green hummingbird, dead, I thought, outside the front porch window. I leave my windows unwashed so that birds don’t break their necks or skulls against the glass, but dirty glass didn’t work this time. I felt such regret.