Attack of the Fifty-Foot Grasshopper! Or, How To Deal with Bugs

Or at least 50 million. Two nights I woke up at one point in the night having to pee (considering the 3 liters of water I drink per day, a fairly common occurrence.) I heard a loud, penetrating hum and, remembering the short circuit in our building earlier in the day, thought something was up with the electricity again. Oh, was I wrong.

The walls outside my room were covered with these little fellows, grasshoppers climbing and flying around. I ran the gauntlet to what I imagined was the relative safety of the toilet, only to find more on the door and even a couple waving at me from the toilet. A terrifying experience for one half-asleep. I re-tucked my net extra tight.

In the morning, while appreciating my mosquito net for keeping out spiders and now grasshoppers, I realized this meant fried grasshoppers would now be available; sure enough, people were out early in the morning, harvesting the bugs from buildings; trees; grass; and the sky was full of birds - crows and sparrows, mainly - gluttonously flying around.

How to fry grasshoppers? It's amazing in it's simplicity:

1. Collect
When the sound of grasshoppers' (let's call them Jiminys) wings rubbing together makes someone think there is a major electrical malfunction, this only takes a few minutes.

2. Clean

As in, remove legs and wings, even as you watch the Jiminys reach for your fingers with their remaining legs - or stumps - and turn their heads left and right, trying to bite you with their pincers. It would be sad, but only if you mistook their behavior for actual intelligence and not the simply life-saving instinct it truly is. Remember: they're just bugs.

It is still creepy, though.

3. Fry

Just dry pan-fry.

Jiminys are so greasy they cook in their own fat; 100% protein my ass.


4. Eat


See? Eating already. Maybe we should consider this for the next locust swarm. We still have 14 years or so to come up with some recipes, right?