By KAREN MADORIN
Unfortunately for several of my gardening friends this summer, grasshoppers descended in mass and devoured entire gardens as well as leaves and bark off trees. For those expecting to load canning shelves and freezers with summer harvests, this invasion devastated their plans.
While we saw plenty of hoppers in our yard, garden, and flower bed, numbers didn’t increase enough to do more than leave moth-eaten leaves. Compounding the insult, some insects landed on unsuspecting humans, causing them to jerk and thrash like a victim with a severe case of St. Vitus’ Dance. As a result, when I see a grasshopper, I exercise permanent population control. While I race after zig-zagging, bristle-legged insects, my town chickens cheer me on, hopping from foot to foot eagerly awaiting their daily connection to nature’s food chain.
I’ve learned early morning offers my best opportunity to catch elusive insects. Cooler temps slow the critters until they act downright sluggish. Morning dew offers me an additional edge. Jumping and crawling through good size droplets that collect on insect wings and legs impedes their flying and leaping.
When we lived in the country, our chickens free-ranged over yard and prairie, snagging all the hoppers they wanted. Our current town girls live a restricted life in their princess pen with excelsior-lined nesting boxes. As royalty, they eagerly await a minion’s delivery of lettuce and zucchini for breakfast. While they peck at their greens, they ogle me racing about the yard and through the garden seeking fresh protein to contribute.
Over decades serving as a chicken tender, I’ve learned chickens are smarter than they look. They recognize words, people, and actions, and make decisions accordingly. When they see me exit the garage first thing each morning, they line up ready to compete for the best pickins from the scrap bowl. While nibbling veggies, their attentive eyes and clucks urge me to collect leaf-devouring hoppers and deliver them. In their minds, insects trump veggies any morning of the week.
While the girls await my success at grabbing grasshoppers hiding in our lawn, crawling up garden plants, and drying off on the shed wall, I suspect they tally how many I snag. They then devise ways they can beat their fellow cackleberry-droppers to my bug-filled fingers as I pop one at a time into their enclosure.
In general, our ISO Browns are gentle, sweet little gals. However, mornings get western when one hen grabs a succulent hopper from the beak of another. If that hopper falls to the ground during the snatch and escapes, chaos erupts. Millenia of genetic wiring drive these ladies to a frenzy, releasing inner Tyrannosaurus Rexes. Suddenly, I have four prowling predators until one finds the prey and gobbles it.
In a perfect world, these hens would free range. Being town girls, they need help. As that helper, I get exercise and agility training, my plants survive with fewer holes gnawed in them, and the hens get fresh-from-nature food. Returning the favor, they bless us with our link to nature’s food chain—the best eggs ever.