Daily Newsie

This morning was the 19th annual trash clean-up at a local lake, meaning hundreds of people armed with garbage bags were ferried to various sections of shoreline, where they collected everything that’s been chucked overboard since last year. A photographer and I rode together on a pontoon boat to join a group of four people — father and son, and husband and wife — on the far shore, then followed them around for a while.

It was interesting and fun, although treacherous because a slippery steno pad and heavy purse do not a surefooted reporter make. I nearly fell into the lake at least five times, but managed to stay mostly dry by walking through the tall grass rather than splashing along the water line. I was congratulating myself on being such a genius — the only dry-sneakered one in the bunch — when, on our return trip, I felt something inside my jeans near my knee. I didn’t want to freak out the eight-year-old Cub Scout by jumping all around and screaming, so I calmly rolled up my pants leg and shook out exactly half of a little grasshopper.

There’s half a grasshopper inside my pants, my brain calmly registered, before it realized what it had just said. HALF A GRASSHOPPER? AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

The severed corpse rolled across the boat and underneath a seat, at about the same time my Cub Scout friend pointed out the ginormous spider crouching in a corner right behind me. Momentarily distracted, I cowered in fear while he, my pint-sized knight in blue and gold, smashed it … and then I went back to obsessing about the disgusting grasshopper smear on my leg and the whereabouts of the other half of the grasshopper.

I still haven’t found it.

I don’t usually bother with nature. I dislike picnics and camping trips, and forcefully impart to all foreign creatures in my home that indoors is my terrain and outdoors is theirs. I don’t intentionally hurt any living thing — although at times it’s tempting — but I’m definitely not a commune-with-nature kind of girl. Today was fun, yes, but the photographer and I were more than happy to finish up the assignment, get off the boat, and drive my air-conditioned car to the coffee shop for some java and muffins.

It’s funny, because I grew up playing in the creek, chasing water skippers, and climbing trees. I’ve morphed into a different person as the years have gone by, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t lost my love of playing in the dirt.

Then I discover half a grasshopper in my pants, and am reminded why I did.