Bugged Out Eyes!

Have you ever been poked in the eye? Have you ever been poked in the eye when your eyelid was still open? Have you ever been poked in the eye when your eyelid was still open by something tiny and sharp?

Right after I turned 9 years old, my mom and step dad, Vee, were living in Homedale, Idaho. It's a very small farm town in southwest Idaho. It was near the Snake River, not to far from the Oregon border.

That summer, some of Vee's family had come to his parent's house because his niece Melissa was getting married. Vee's parents, Grandpa and Grandma Davenport, had a place just a few miles from where we lived.  It was cool to meet some of Vee’s extended family.  There were some kids in my age bracket and we had a lot of fun.  One of Vee’s nephews, Johnny, was my age. We became quick friends. Johnny came over to our house to spend the night and we put up a tent and camped out on the side of the house.

The backyard was full of five and six-foot weeds where I was often found hiding and or adding to my bug collections.  I collected everything from grasshoppers to praying mantises and all kinds of spiders, including black widows, garden spiders and cats face spiders. I had jars that were full of my catches.

One of my favorite things to do was to catch two different species and place them in the same jar. I would keep statistics as to which bugs would prevail in a fight. Many of the insects didn't fight each other but many of them did and there were some classic battles. For example, watching two different spiders attack each other was priceless. My favorite insect was the praying mantis. 99% of the time the Praying mantis would eat anything I put in the jar with it. Including the dreaded black widow. Anything that got near those long serrated legs was toast. Actually more like corn on the cob when you watched the mantis start to methodically eat it's prey side to side.

So during Johnny's visit, he and I were collecting some large grasshoppers that first evening and out of nowhere something flew into my eye.  It didn't really hurt at first but it was irritating for sure.  I tried and tried to get it out but to no avail.  Johnny and Mom tried to flush it out with water and the back leg of a small grasshopper came out.  We thought we had gotten it all out so we went to bed and awoke the next morning to a big surprise.  My eye had swollen shut and was puffing out like a bubble.

Mom said that it was probably just a reaction to the grasshopper leg but I thought I could still feel something inside my eye.  Mom said it was probably because my eye had been scratched while the leg was still in there.

When Vee’s niece, Melissa, and her new husband, Dale, showed up that afternoon after the wedding we all met to see them off.  They took lots of pictures and opened some of the gifts and I watched through my one good eye.  The family thought it was hilarious that I had been inflicted with this handicap by one of my own beloved insects.  I suppose that is pretty funny now that I think about it.




It was not funny then however. It was a week later when the swelling finally subsided.  I was washing my eye out with some water because I still felt that scratch on my eye. It felt good to finally get some cool water in there. While I was splashing the water into my eye, I felt something on the edge of my lower eyelid. I took one more handful of water and splashed it on my eye. The feeling went away, as did the scratchy feeling. I looked into my hand and saw the cause of my ailment.  A baby grasshopper missing one hind leg had fallen out from behind my eyelid and landed in my hand. I looked at the sharp prongs on the lone hind leg and knew exactly what had been causing the scratchy feeling.

To this day I still enjoy the six legged species and I love to watch them fight. I'm not so fond of spiders but I do enjoy catching them whenever I have a praying mantis. Love to watch the praying mantis eat, and it might as well be a creepy spider. However now when I go collecting I make sure I am wearing the proper safety goggles. Just in case one of them tries to give me the macro view again!