The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CII

Grasshoppers and Rainbows

I thought that my grasshopper dilemma had resolved. I went on vacation and when I returned, the plant I suspected of being a sunflower was gone, as were the grasshoppers that were ravaging my garden. My gardenia looked a little better so I thought all the grasshoppers had left. Sayonara, little guys!

But, no. A few days after being home, there were two monster grasshoppers sitting in my gardenia. They had grown up beautifully. Nearly four inches long sporting every color of the rainbow. These insects were spectacular. Maybe they were new. They probably had not gotten the message that this garden was mine, not theirs.

I always felt bad about spraying my plants with vinegar, and I didn’t want to do that to these guys, but I also wanted to save my gardenia. So, instead of spraying anything or trying to hurt them, I decided to relocate them. They are easy to carry in hand but they don’t like to be carried and get jumpy. I discovered the best method for moving them across the yard was to coax them onto a stick and carry them away. When I held the stick upright, halfway across the yard, the first one jumped off. I got him back on the stick and discovered that he would hang on and not let go if carried upside down. So, I took him over to the blue flowered butterfly bushes, and put him there. Then I got his partner and brought that one over.

“There you go!” I said “Have at it, all the butterfly bushes you can eat. Free of charge.”

I left them there, ninety feet away from the garden where they were born, and wished them well. I figured they would get along fine. The butterfly bushes are kind of out of control, so grasshoppers feasting here, I did not mind.

It seemed to work. I didn’t see them for a few days. Then, one day when I got home from work, stepped out of my car, headed to the front door, and met one standing in my driveway.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. He definitely recognized me as the monster who had evicted him from the garden because he turned right around and began lumbering back toward the grass. “That’s right. Move it along chum.” I told him, like a beat cop ushering a drunk to the other side of the railroad tracks.

I went in the house for a while and when I came out to toss away some trash I caught him trying to slash my tire.

“Really, dude?” I asked. Then he jumped up to the top of the tire and into the wheel well of the vehicle, presumably to cut my brake lines. “Okay, then, if that’s how it is, I get it. Good luck with that.”

I left him alone.

The next day I went out to drive to work and found him standing atop my gardenia bush. “Really, dude?” I asked again. Shaking my head and deciding to deal with him later, I went to work.

When I got home, he was still sitting in my gardenia bush, surprised to see me. “How was your drive? Any . . . problems?”

My commute was uneventful. My tire did not go flat and my brakes did not fail.

“My drive was fine, but you sir, need to get out of my gardenia bush.”

I know many gardeners would crush the poor fellow or do something dastardly like throw him into a spiderweb, but not me. I wasn’t really worried about him successfully sabotaging my vehicle and subjecting me to a horrific demise, so I did not want him to suffer any deadly fate either. After all, he was just a guy trying to enjoy a meal, that’s it. What right do I have to deny him that?

Since butterfly bushes were not his thing I looked around the yard for suitable solutions. Lo, and behold, there were two gardenia bushes right over the fence in my neighbor’s yard. They were there all the time, only twenty feet from my garden, where my gardenia bush had originally come from. I thought the parent plant had died. Maybe it had, and mine and these were the offspring, anyway, there they were; happy, healthy gardenias, in a side garden where nobody paid attention to them.

So, I plucked my pal from the leaves and carried him over to the other gardenia bushes. “Buddy, have I got a surprise for you!” These bushes were much more lush than mine. There was a lot more to eat. “Here you go,” I said, “How would you like to try these out?”

He was quite pleased. “I shall decimate it.”

I left him there. He was happy. I was happy. I checked on him a few times over the next few days. He was still there, in my neighbor’s gardenia bush, munching away. Meanwhile, my gardenia bush was coming back to life, sprouting new buds. Life was good.

But I never stopped thinking about the turmoil I put him through. And his friend, where had that one gone? Was it really up to me to decide where an insect should eat? How did I get to make that decision for him? What gives me that right?

Other than being the self-proclaimed authority on the scene, nothing. Where that bug eats is none of my business. Even if I think I can lay claim to the plant he is eating, if it has nothing to do with my livelihood, like that of a farmer who must defend his crop from pests to ensure that he has food that he can sell so that he and others don’t starve, then it should not be my concern.

Saying “This is mine, not yours,” when it really isn’t, is just plain wrong. Making decisions for others when they are able to decide for themselves is not helpful, it is dominion, and again, it is just plain wrong. And we are seeing more of it.

Just because some people like to shop at Target doesn’t mean that they have the right to dictate who else shops there and what they shop for, but that is what is happening. The LGBTQIA+ community has been undergoing accelerated levels of hate recently and those who hate them have targeted Target for daring to sell clothing geared toward the gay and transgender shopper. Some haters threatened and harassed Target employees because of what the company chose to sell. Target stores in Oklahoma City received bomb threats.

This is absolutely terrible stuff. It is sad that the LGBTQIA+ community is being attacked for no reason other than for being themselves. The hate is really going off the rails. It is not a misnomer to call it an epidemic of violence. Transgendered people are being killed at an alarming rate.

There are over 400 proposed bills currently aimed at anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. If many of the proposed laws pass, they will ban books, censor school topics and discussions relating to sexual orientation, prevent transgender kids from participating in school activities, and basically promote the idea that the gay community and non-conforming people belong to a lower class of citizenry. It seeks to establish a caste system. That is un-American.

There is no good reason to hate somebody because they are not just like you. That is just being a Nazi, plain and simple.

It shocks me that anybody cares what Target sells and who they sell it to. And that anybody got bent out of shape when Bud Light partnered with transgender social media talent Dylan Mulvaney.

What twirls my brain is that anyone has so much hate that they will start boycotting brands and be so vocal about it.

When Jack Daniels teamed up with drag queens for an ad campaign, some long-time loyal customers lost their minds. They could not handle the truth; that guys who like to dress like that like to drink the same thing they do.

The hate is stupid. Not much more you can say about it than that.

Funny thing to me is I don’t shop like the haters or the ones they hate. I don’t shop at Target, not on a regular basis. I have in the past, but I probably haven’t walked into Target in a few years. Not because I hate them or what they sell or who else shops there, but because the store is out of the way for me. If it weren’t I might go there more often. I don’t drink Jack Daniels because I don’t care much for American whisky. I like Canadian whiskey and Scotch from Scotland. I don’t drink Bud Light because I don’t like light beer. I like dark, heavy beers, and I always thought light beer was gay anyway, so I really don’t get where all these people with such an odd misperception of what woke is are coming from.

June is Pride Month. I’m not gay and I don’t identify with any of the other letters in the LGTBQIA+ acronym, but I don’t hate any of them, either. In fact, I like them a hell of a lot more than the Nazis and right-wingers who do hate them, because those stupid idiots - I really hate them. But that is their own fault.

My grasshopper and I love gardenias for different reasons. People who are different from you also like the same things you do. Whether it is beer, or clothes, or ice cream, or movies, or cool cars, or nice shoes. But other people are not insects, and just because they are different, does not make them an alien species or a lesser being.

Nobody should hate anybody for liking what they like. They have no right.

Thanks for reading.

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