Sue Lenard, age 11, of Cassville, N.Y., for her question:

DOES A GRASSHOPPER REALLY SPIT?

Some people claim that an annoyed grasshopper is likely to spit out a juicy gob of tobacco. This may be quite true  if the famished fellow has been dining on leaves of the tobacco plant. At other times, he may try to discourage his enemies by spitting out gobs of partly dissolved leaves from other plants.

This summer, more and more of us will be growing our very own vegetables in what used to be the back yard. We soon learn to list the grasshopper among our insect enemies who arrive from who knows where, just in time to devour our precious young plants. When overcome by curiosity, we may hold a grasshopper to get a closer look at the enemy. This is when the pesky critter is likely to spit out juicy gobs of greenish, partly digested food.

The sudden insult may cause you to drop him and no doubt it works to protect him from ants and other hazards. A grasshopper is a sizable, meaty insect with many hungry enemies, including birds and beetles, snakes and spiders, mice and a variety of other insects.

However, like all nature's children, he has built in defenses to help him survive. He has five eyes to spot trouble and a couple of ways to make a fast exit. At a moment's notice, his long, strong back legs can leap 40 times the length of his body. In most cases he has sturdy wings built for fast takeoffs.

These maneuvers may save him from a belligerent beetle   and zoom him straight into the path of a hungry bird. In such cases, the wily grasshopper may hide among the leaves, where his color scheme blends in with the background.

But alas, this may be fatal, for here lurks his worst enemy, the praying mantis. This overgrown cricket cousin waits with endless patience for her favorite food  which is grasshopper meat. Chances are, he fails to notice her until too late. When she pounces, in a last desperate bid for survival he may spit  but the mantis is too busy munching to notice.

We modern vegetable growers hate to use strong chemicals to protect our back yard crops from destructive insects. So we buy cocoons of mantis eggs to provide natural predators against the grasshoppers. Another trick is to baffle various bugs by growing marigolds and blends of other strong¬smelling plants among the vegetables.