invasion of the grasshoppers

Yesterday, we went for a drive to a little town that is about 15 minutes from us.  The place is called Teocaltitan De Guadalupe.  It is home to San Pedro Esqueda.  Here is a plaque showing some info about him. Sorry, of course, it is in Spanish.

I had taken my camera to get some pictures of the girls.  They really weren't into it, but I forced them to let me take a handful of pictures.  Mean mom!  I put all the pictures my Flickr account.  Check them out if you would like!

On the way there, there were giant grasshoppers EVERYWHERE!  While driving, we couldn't avoid running over them on the street.  It was pretty disgusting.  When we got to the church, they were all over the place.  I snapped a few pics of them.  I didn't really put anything next to them to show you scale.  But, these bad boys were probably a minimum of 3 or 4 inches long.  I was fine as long as none of them jumped on me. I hate their sticky little legs.

Afterwards, we stopped at a nearby restaurant.  The food was really good.  I splurged and had their chips and salsa!  Oh, I can't wait to go back!  And, the girls loved it, too!  Most restaurants like this one have play areas so the kids can go be crazy outside instead of being crazy in the restaurant.  Good idea on their part!

We had to fight our way past all the grasshoppers there, too!  I didn't get too close, but check out all of them on this wall.  And, it was like this along all the exterior walls.  And, we had to watch our step in the grass. 

Emily wanted to catch all of them.  No surprise there.  So, they didn't seem to bother her.  Bella was just ignoring them.  Way to excited about the jumpy house they were playing in.

rhino or beetle?

This morning Jorge went to take out the trash and I hear "babe, come and look at this". I never know what it is going to be that he wants to show me. Is it something the girls did? Maybe some dog pooped on the sidewalk in front of our house again... You just can't tell with him. I wasn't expecting him to be pointing out something that makes me go running for my camera. Well, I didn't really have to run. And, he should have known me well enough to say "bring your camera with you".

I opened the door to find what a first looked like a dinosaur! Ok, maybe I am exaggerating (a little). But seriously, look at the size of this!

This beetle could probably get a job in construction and help with our rent and utility bills. And, you know my feelings about beetles, but for some reason, probably the humorously gigantic size of it, I found it not so scary. You see, I even hand my hand pretty close to it.

You know without any central air or heating in the houses around here, the need for them to be air tight is just not a necessity. Bugs can easily get into our house (although this guy would only fit through the open door and I am not about to give him a key!). Bella has been on bug patrol lately. We (well, I) hate spiders so we have told her if she sees one to let us know. Having seen us step on them, she has started to do the same to all bugs, except the giant crickets (we told her to leave those alone--they are innocent) in the house. And, if Bella does something you can be sure that Emily, aka Repeat, is going to do the same.

While I was trying to take a million pictures of this beetle, and was using Bella's size 7 shoe as a comparison for size, I see the shoe disappear. The fact that both Emily and Bella are shoe crazy, I thought it was just one of them wanting to wear the shoe. Emily did grab the shoe, but she wasn't wanting to wear it, she wanted to use it to smash the beetle. She picked up the shoe and slammed it on the beetle. Luckily for the beetle she hasn't been lifting much weights lately so she didn't get enough power behind it to do any damage.

Jorge picked it up and let it go free...far away from our front door.