Green Grasshopper
Green Grasshopper
It is already mid-July. According to meteorology, the dog days of summer have just begun, but in fact, the intense heat has just begun. The weather has been extremely hot for several weeks.
Tonight, a party to celebrate the National Day is being held in the village.
The village children are gathering around a fire. While jumping for joy, I vaguely saw the firelight reflected on the bell tower of the church, and the "bang bang bang bang" sound of the drums was accompanied by the "swishing" sound of the "Zhuan Tian Monkey" fireworks. At this time, I was alone at night At 9 o'clock, in the cool breeze, I hid in the dark and listened carefully to the cheerful concert in the fields. This was a concert to celebrate the harvest. It was better than the fireworks, bonfires, and paper lanterns in the village square at this moment. , especially the festival party composed of low-quality soju is more solemn and magnificent. Although it is simple but beautiful, although it is quiet but powerful.
The night is deep and the cicadas have stopped chirping.
Throughout the day, they feasted on the sun and heat and sang happily. When night came, they wanted to rest, but they were often disturbed and unable to rest.
In the thick branches of the sycamore tree, Suddenly there will be a muffled sound like a whine, short and shrill.
This is the desperate wail of the cicada that is disturbed by the sudden attack of the green grasshopper; the green grasshopper is a fierce and fierce hunter at night, and it attacks the cicada. I rushed forward, hugged the cicada from the waist, disemboweled it, and took out its heart and lungs.
After singing and dancing, there was actually killing.
Near my residence, green grasshoppers It seems to be rare.
Last year, I planned to study this insect, but never found it. I had to ask a ranger for help, and he finally helped me get it from the Lagarde Plateau. Two pairs of green grasshoppers arrived.
It is a severely cold area, and beech trees are now beginning to grow up to Wangdu Peak.
Good luck always has to play tricks first, and then move towards perseverance Those who persist will smile.
The green grasshoppers that were missing for a long time last year can be seen almost everywhere this summer.
I can catch them without leaving my small garden. You can catch as many of them as you want.
Every night, I hear them chirping in the dense bushes and grass.
Seize this good opportunity and don’t miss it. Time will never come again.
Since June, I have put enough pairs of green grasshoppers that I have caught into a metal mesh bell jar, with an earthen jar underneath. A layer of sand is used as the base.
This beautiful insect is simply awesome. It is light green all over and has two light white ribbons on both sides of its body.
It has a beautiful shape. With a light body and a pair of large gauze wings, they are the most elegant and beautiful insects of the family Acrididae.
I am very proud of catching such captives.
They will What will you tell me? Just wait and see.
They must be fed now.
I feed these prisoners lettuce leaves.
They Sure enough, they were chewing, but they ate very little and looked disdainful.
I quickly figured it out: I was raising some guys who were not willing to be vegetarians.
They need something else, and they seem to want to catch live food.
But what kind of live food is it? An accidental opportunity happened to let me know what it is.
Dawn At midnight, I was walking in front of the door, and suddenly something fell from a sycamore tree nearby and made a squeaking sound.
I hurried forward and ran forward.
Yes A grasshopper was emptying out the belly of a cicada it had caught.
The cicada chirped and struggled in vain, but the grasshopper kept clinging to it, burying its head deep into the cicada's internal organs. Tear it out in small bites.
I understand: the grasshoppers attacked the cicadas high in the tree early in the morning when they were resting. The cicadas who were attacked and disembowelled were suddenly startled. , and then the attacker and the attacked fell into a ball.
After that time, I have seen similar scenes of massacre many times.
I even saw Guts. The extraordinary grasshopper jumps up to chase the dizzy cicada, just like the goshawk chasing the skylark in the high sky.
Compared with the extraordinary courageous grasshopper, the raptor is slightly inferior.
Goshawks specialize in animals that are weaker than themselves, while locusts are the opposite.
, attacking a behemoth that is much larger and stronger than itself, and the result of this hand-to-hand fight between the two is that the smaller one will undoubtedly win.
Grasshoppers have extremely strong jaws and sharp teeth. Claws rarely disembowel the opponent, and since the latter has no weapons, they can only wail and struggle.
The most important thing is to hold the prey, which is not difficult. Just take action when the prey is taking a nap at night.
Any cicada that is hit by the ferocious grasshoppers on night patrol will inevitably die miserably.
It is understandable why cicadas appear in the quiet night. When the sound stops, sometimes you will suddenly hear a scream from the canopy.
That is a robber in light green clothes who has just caught a sleeping cicada.
I found the food my diners needed: I fed them cicadas.
They found this dish very appetizing, so in two or three weeks, My cage was a mess, with cicada heads, empty breast shells, broken wings, severed limbs and broken claws everywhere.
Only the belly was almost completely missing.
The belly is a good piece of meat. Although the nutritional content is not high, it seems to taste very good.
Indeed, there is syrup accumulated in the crop in the cicada's belly, which is the cicada using its own little drill to extract the tender meat from the belly. The sweet sap extracted from the bark of the tree.
Is it because of this candied fruit that cicada belly has become the first choice of hunters? This is very likely.
In order to diversify the recipes In fact, I also feed them some sweet fruits, such as pear slices, grapes, melon slices, etc.
They all love to eat these fruits.
Green grasshoppers are like British: It likes steak with jam very much.
Maybe this is why it disembowels the cicada as soon as it catches it: its belly is filled with delicious meat wrapped in jam.
This kind of sweet cicada delicacy can not be eaten everywhere.
In the north, green grasshoppers are everywhere, and it is impossible for them to find the delicacy they are so keen on here. .
They probably have other food to eat.
To clarify this problem, I fed them the pilose beetles, which is a summer beetle that is similar to the spring beetle. The same is true for the horned beetle.
As soon as this elytra insect is thrown into the cage, the green grasshoppers pounce on it without hesitation, eating only the elytra, head and claws.
I put in a beautiful and fat pine tree beetle again, and the result was the same. The next day I found that it had been disemboweled by the vicious gang.
These examples are enough to illustrate the problem.
This proves that grasshoppers are insectivores, especially those insects that are not protected by hard armor; it also proves that they particularly like meat, but like praying mantises they only eat the prey they catch.
This cicada executioner also knows that meat is too high in calories and must be supplemented with vegetarian food.
After eating meat and drinking blood, he also needs some fruit or something. Sometimes, there is really no fruit. It's okay to eat some grass.
However, cannibalism still exists.
In fact, I have never seen the migratory locusts in my cage behave as barbarically as the praying mantises. , the latter often kills his love rivals and devours his lovers.
However, if a weak locust falls in the cage, the survivors will treat it like ordinary prey without hesitation.
It is not because they are short of food that they feed on their dead companions.
In any case, all insects with swords are injured to varying degrees. The habit of feeding on companions.
Other than this, the locusts in my cage live in peace and harmony.
They have never seen each other. There were fierce fights, but at best it was just a slight fight over food.
As soon as I threw a piece of pear into the cage, a locust immediately occupied it.
Because it is afraid that others will come to fight for it, it kicks its legs to prevent others from grabbing its food.
Selfishness is everywhere.
It eats When he was full, he gave his seat to others, who then occupied the pear slices domineeringly.
The diners in the cage just flew up one by one to occupy themselves.
After eating and drinking, everyone used the big
The tips of the jaws scratch the soles of the feet, and the claws are dipped in saliva to wipe the forehead and eyes, and then they grab the mesh with their claws or lie on the sand, meditating, and digesting food leisurely.
Daytime They sleep most of the time, especially when the weather is hot.
As the sun sets and night falls, these guys get more energetic.
9 o'clock Zhong Guangjing was the most noisy.
Suddenly he rushed up to the height of the dome, and sometimes he came down happily, and then rushed up again.
Everyone came and went noisily. Go, run and jump on the circular path, take a few bites of something delicious without stopping.
The male green grasshopper stays aside and teases the passing females with its tentacles.
The future mothers walked solemnly, with their swords half raised.
For those anxious and fanatical males, the big thing now is mating.
Those with experience will tell you You can tell what they want to do just by looking at it.
This is also the main content of my observation.
My wish was fulfilled, but it was not completely satisfied because the good things below were delayed too late. , I was not able to see the last scene.
The last scene would be delayed until late at night or early in the morning.
The little bit I saw was limited to the endless The prologue.
The lovers in love face each other, almost touching each other, using their soft tentacles to touch and test each other.
They are like two foil swords striking each other. To show friendly rivals.
The male chirped a few times from time to time, pulled the bow a few times, and then fell silent, perhaps because he was too excited and did not continue to pull.
< p>It was 11 o'clock, and the courtship was still not over.I was so sleepy that I regretfully left the couple behind.
The next morning, the female gave birth. There is a strange thing hanging below the root of the oviduct, which is a pocket containing sperm. It is like a small milky white light bulb, the size of a balance weight, vaguely divided into a small number of oblong vesicles.
When the female green grasshopper walks around, the little bulb rubs against the ground and sticks to some sand.
Then, it treats the impregnated little bulb as a feast and slowly eats the little bulb inside. After sucking all the stuff, he bit the thin skin bag, chewed it for a long time, and finally swallowed it all.
In less than half a day, the milky white growth disappeared, and even the residue was covered by it. Eating it up happily.
This unimaginable feast seems to have been introduced from an alien planet, because it is very different from the feasting habits on earth.
Acrididae insects are really a Strange world, they are one of the oldest land animals, and like centipedes and cephalopods, they are a representative of ancient habits that are still in use today.
(This article is selected from Original work Volume 6),12,