Suz vs The Locust

The locust really set the tone of the day.

I'd just gotten into my car and fired up the stereo. It was 8:50, giving me a good 40 minutes to get into work. The weather wasn't awful, my sinuses weren't throbbing...overall, the makings of a good day.

Then I saw It.

It sat on my left windshield wiper. Wait - sat on is too delicate a phrase. Engulfed is what I'm looking for. It engulfed my left windshield wiper.

I thought about turning on the wipers to flick it off. This presented the unsanitary possibility that Mr. Locust might become entrapped underneath it, thus leaving a dreadful smear on my windshield. Not that my windshield is flawless, but I wasn't about to scrape a gigantic bug off it when it was only Tuesday.

So I did what any semi-awake female would do: I took a picture...and left it there.

I kept an eye on it as I drove cautiously down the mean streets of Orange. Aside from its antennae twitching in the breeze, the locust didn't move. I wondered if it would stay with me through the trip, join me at work. Would I have to keep it in a jar? Could I leave it on someone's desk? Actually, that thought had merit.

I turned onto the freeway and stepped on the gas. Mr. Locust clung to the wiper for a few seconds, looking like he was a kid clinging to a the restraints on a roller coaster.

I hit 60. Mr. Locust abruptly let go. He soared off into the heavens, perhaps to fly away to hassle some poor snook in an orchard...or splatter at high impact against some unsuspecting fellow's windshield.

I reached work with a sense of relief, and a strange urge to tell everyone what had happened. I mean, it's not every day a giant locust is within five feet of me.

"Perhaps it's just an extremely robust grasshopper?" Mother Dearest suggested when I showed it to her.

I will reiterate the words uttered by Video Guy in the break room: "That's no grasshopper."

Or, as Miss J remarked, "It's the size of a small tree!"

Yeah.

That small tree was on my car, y'all.