Susan E. Ford, age 7, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, for her question:
Why are there no grasshoppers in the winter?
About this time of year, the grasshoppers are getting ready to arrive in the fields and gardens. Chances are, you will not notice them when they arrive, even though there may be millions of them. You will not notice them until they have been with us for about six weeks.
Last year's grasshoppers all perished in the fall before the frosty winter weather began. Their crisp little bodies were left to decay and add rich plant food to the soil. But this was not the end of the grasshopper clan: Oh no. All the lady grasshoppers made plans to be sure that another generation of teeming grasshoppers would arrive to greet us in the spring. Late in the summer, each mother grasshopper laid a bunch of eggs and tenderly buried them in the ground. The sturdy little eggs could stand the winter, even though she could not. And she took extra care to place them safely under the blanket of winter snow.
Mrs. Grasshopper has a special tube for laying her eggs. It is called an ovipositor and it is as the tail end of her body. The ovipositor is tipped with prongs, two pointing up and two pointing down. This makes it just right for placing her eggs just where she wants to put them. It is also just right for digging a small pocket in the soil. When time comes to lay her eggs, she uses her ovipositor to scoop out a neat little hole in the dirt. Then she eases it again, this time to place her eggs into the tiny burrow, one by one.
The grasshopper eggs are smooth and white and the mother may place 20 of them in one earthy pocket. Then she squirts out a frothy foam that covers them like a blanket. Now they are safely sealed inside a cozy egg pod. Mrs. Grasshopper may lay 20 egg pods in different parts of the ground. Some of her pods may have 50 eggs and some may have as many as 100. When the job is done, Mrs. Grasshopper has finished her life work.
But the cozy eggs sleep on and on through the winter. When the first breath of spring warms the ground, they begin to hatch. The babies look like weird copies of their mother. They are pale and they have no wings and it takes a row of eight of them to measure an inch. But the sprightly midgets are hungry, oh so very hungry. They greedily gobble up all the grasses and other greenery in sight. And they grow. Soon they are too big for their tight little skins. So they burst. But no harm is done because new and bigger skins already have grown under the old ones. In six weeks, the growing grasshoppers molt their skins five times. After the last molt, they emerge with two pairs of wings. They are now grown up grasshoppers just like their parents.
There are many kinds of grasshoppers and it is fun to learn all their names. Some kinds can make chirping sounds and we hear their cheerful choruses in the grass. Most grasshoppers can fly when they wish. They have an outer pair of stiff wings. Under them they have a gauzy pair of fan shaped wings that can be unfolded in the air. But the grasshopper is a famous ,jumper and most of the time he prefers to travel in leaps and bounds. If you could equal his jumping acrobatics, you could leap right over your house.