Joe DE Russo. age 12, of Albany, N. Y., for his question:
Where does the grasshopper spend the winter?
The grasshopper makes his appearance in early March and stays with us until the first winter frosts. We may spot him leaping through the fields and meadows or taking short flights on his gauzy wings. He may be a singing type grasshopper and add a note or two to the chorus of crickets and katydids. But most of these insects disappear when winter acmes and reappear in teeming numbers with the spring.
The life story of the grasshopper develops in easy stages. Mrs. Grasshopper lays her eggs in late summer or Early fall, and they do not hatch until the following spring. The mother insect has an ovipositor or Egg placing organ at the end of her long body. This ovipositor has four sturdy little prongs; two curve upward. And two curve down. When time comes to lay her eggs, she uses her ovipositor to drill a hole in the ground.
She then lays her batch of small white Eggs into the hole and covers them with frothy foam, which seals them safely from the weather. There may be 20 to 100 eggs arranged in a neat double row and. sealed together in the egg pod. A female grasshopper may lay 20 pods during the last weeks of summer.
When the Egg laying Sob is done, she dies along with all the other adult grasshoppers. The next generation sleeps through the winter season in countless little pods buried dust below the ground. When spring weather arrives to warm the soil, the grasshoppers hatch from the Eggs and creep up from their cradles.
A hatched grasshopper looks somewhat like a small caricature of his parents. He is a pale insect about one Eighth of an inch long with an oversized head and an oversized pair of back legs. He has a pair of big eyes, two short antennae, and no wings. And, my, he is hungry. The little fellow devours grass and other greenery at a great rate. Some of his cousins devour our craps, and for this reasons these insects have a bad reputation among farmers and gardeners.
The young grasshopper soon grows too big for his skin. So he molts and becomes bigger. In six weeks or so he molts five times, each time growing and, more like his parents. After his last molt, he has two pairs of wings. The stiff front wings fold straight over his body beyond his tail. His back wings are gauzy fans, which remain folded under the front wings except when the grasshopper takes to the air.
A grasshopper is a champion jumper, and he has been known to leap a distance of 10 feet. If you could equal his, jumping skill. You could leap over your house with no trouble at all. Most grasshoppers develop from egg hood to old age in a single year but some of their pesky locust cousins do not energy as winged adults for 10 years or more.