August 2, 2001

In the late 1890s, my maternal grandfather freighted hay across the 09 Divide from Sherwood to Ozona by mules and wagon. Backhaul was dry mesquite wood to fuel the stoves in Sherwood. Included in his freighting days was the story of how this unfenced land burned off every summer from lightning storms. How the swags and flats teemed with prairie dog towns so void of mesquites, he carried wood underneath his wagon bed for part of the trip.

Forty years later, my family moved here to ranch a country of open prairie land. Only difference in the fire hazard was the other seasons also began to have grass fires. Men in huge numbers came from the small towns in pickups carrying barrels of water to wet burlap sacks and fight racing infernos threatening to burn our world. There were no livestock sprayers or volunteer fire departments. Nothing mechanical except the big red engines in San Angelo styled to fight house fires. We heard of, but never saw, a fire truck a big cow outfit owned on the west side of Irion County.

I remember once a burned strip three miles wide and eight miles long cut a north-south swath through the ranch. All summer long, we crossed the blackened earth to reach the other side of the ranch on ground as blistering hot as a planet's surface, mounted on old ponies drenched in a charcoal streaked sweat.

In the 1940s war years, the Air Force leased bombing sites over a wide scope of the Divide and onto the lands in the breaks. Student bombardiers dropped bombs on and off targets. As reported before, the fires really became serious during night time training missions using flares on parachutes to float and land miles away from the ranges. For the first time in my memory, a huge livestock loss occurred over east of the ranch. The size and number escapes recollection. I do know the bank foreclosed because Congress was so long approving the victim's claims.

But the most recent fire in June was caused by jumbo grasshoppers instead of lightning. Jumbos have taken the country. Stripped the leaves off all the plants mother left in the yard, climbed the telephone aerial pole and ate the insulation off the wires, and blocked the railroad crossing with piles of slick brown carcasses falling from the trains' cow catcher and pickup grille guards.

The arsonists, however, were the ones with beggar lice burrs built up between their bodies and hind legs. Every time one jumps, the burr striking against the sealed side of the hopper's body sparks and flickers the way the oldtime lamplighter's trail flared in the coming of nightfall. At night, the front yard sparkles like fireflies once lighted the scene. By midnight, the show ends in a lingering odor of burned beggar lice reminiscent of the smell from fireworks displays. Wonder the whole countryside isn't aflame with hundreds of six-legged pilot lights hopping in the dry fodder.

Living in the midst of this disaster has made me an expert in grasshopper behavior. Jumbo grasshoppers' favorite food is jumbo grasshoppers, dead or alive. Black beetles join the chain by scavenging the scraps of dead grasshopper left over by the cannibals. Beetles, however, don't last long eating grasshoppers. Stomach cramps set in, battering the insect's thick shell from within in a rumbling turmoil of indigestion. They also lock into a ball to fight an unnatural urge to jump caused by eating raw grasshopper parts. Ground squirrels on the J.L. Tankersley ranch east of Mertzon bite the heads off jumbos, so Mr. Tankersley claims. However, he says about the time you start depending on a ground squirrel to behead a grasshopper, he'll catch a glimpse of his shadow and hesitate too long to capture his prey.

The telephone man brought out a box of low-powered .22 shells the other day to drop the hoppers before they reach the aerial wire. Called "Aguilla's" from Mexico, the only audible sound is the firing pin striking the shell. Under such siege, silence is important. Hundreds of rounds can be fired without the grasshoppers locating the sniper. I was afraid to start shooting for fear I'd lose control and start blasting away at beetles, or moving shadows. (In shooting coupled grasshoppers, aim for the top hopper. Grasshoppers mate for life. Kill one at the right moment and the mate dies from grief.)

The fire they started roasted plenty of hoppers and caused a lot of black beetles to scorch their feet rushing in too fast to feed on the dead. We have had too much misery without a swarm of fire bugs adding to the dry weather. Sixteen grasshoppers rested on the back screen this morning, basking in the sun under a cloudless day. Wonder how much more sign it's going to take for us to know it's time to give ground.

August 2, 2001