The Turquoise Ledge (26 page)

L
ate in the morning my son Robert called me outside. He'd just seen the biggest grasshopper ever in the front yard.

Chapulin. Was it Lord Chapulin himself?

What did he want?

I hadn't made many copies of his book,
Portrait of Chapulin
, because I was trying to complete the manuscript. He might be concerned with the delay, so he sent an emissary this morning.

But by the time I got to the front yard, the big grasshopper was gone. In the days and weeks since, I've gone back to that late morning when I missed my call from Lord Chapulin's messenger. I believe he came to tell me his people were coming to stay in my yard awhile to rest and to eat.

 

This morning I found a big grasshopper in the front yard eating the leftover vegetables I put out for the wild birds. He seemed unconcerned about me but later when I looked for him, he was gone. I found two big grasshoppers together near a pot of rain lilies, but they walked away from me rapidly. They didn't seem as friendly as Lord Chapulin and the others who visited last year. I seldom see them jump; is this because predators might spot them if they jumped?

This afternoon another white hurricane deluge here—a cloud burst as if a giant water tank ruptured in the sky. The fat gray cloud unrolled itself then fell in a shimmering white veil against the dark basalt hilltops. A warm moist wind out of the southeast drove the clouds rapidly away so the heavy rain did not last.

Before sundown Robert went to see how much rainwater had collected in the cistern and found a desert tortoise on the path by the old windmill well. Summer rainstorms bring out the rare desert tortoises, and one must drive carefully and help them across the road if need be.

The tortoise was the size of a dinner plate, large enough to be sixty years old, as old as I am. I kept my distance out of respect; humans are an ugly sight and a shock to shy wild creatures. I used a soft voice because I didn't want to frighten the tortoise. I said, “Oh you are so beautiful.” Then I slowly withdrew to get out of the creature's path. In more than thirty years living here, we'd not been visited like this before by such an old tortoise. Truly we were blessed.

The tortoise came to the bottom of the wire fence by the path and stopped. At first I thought the tortoise wanted inside the front yard so I took the old pit bull dog indoors. I took the wire cutters and opened a hole in the wire to allow the tortoise to pass through; he got closer to the fence and to the edge of the aloe plants but he came no farther through the wire.

I came back before long to make sure the tortoise did not venture around to the back yard with the four mastiffs. But the tortoise had dug himself down into the damp soft sand until he was partially buried, and partially concealed by the aloes. Sunset gave way to twilight and the tortoise remained there. How odd that it came there to spend the night. There were other places on the hilltop with soft sand the tortoise might have used. Why did the tortoise stop so close to us humans with dogs?

The following morning the tortoise was still partially covered with damp sand by the aloes. I checked on him from time to time. I wanted to see which direction he took when he left. At first he came down the path toward the front gate which I left open in case he wanted to come into the yard.

I watched the tortoise from a distance. When he reached the threshold of the gate he turned away and went downhill a short distance then he got on the diagonal path down the side of the hill that faces west. I checked a short while later and he was gone. I followed the path I'd last seen him take, but a thorough search under the greasewoods nearby revealed no sign of him. Tortoises like to make their burrows in the banks of the arroyos just high enough to stay out of the floodwaters. I walked down the steep slope into the west ravine to see if I might find the tortoise on his way to a burrow, but he'd disappeared.

 

The hummingbirds are contesting with one another for access to the feeder. They whizz around chasing one another; it seems mostly in jest, although last year I distinctly heard the sound of two tiny beaks clicking in combat. With the rain come the tiny sugar gnats that hover in the mesquite leaves; these gnats don't bother humans. The hummingbirds zip and dart through the air and catch the gnats. That's how the hummingbirds survive when flowers are scarce.

 

Again for the fourth day in a row great dark roiling clouds, armies of ghost warriors many legions wide, rise high over the southwest horizon of the black basalt mountains. While I was out walking I saw Chapulin on a greasewood watch me as I looked for rocks, and then in the yard, another grasshopper. All this rain brings them. Chapulin might be one of the Chacs, one of the Lords of the Rain.

The Anthropology Museum in Mexico City has a large exquisite figure of Lord Chapulin carved out of red chalcedony. The famed “Chapultepec” Gardens are the Grasshopper Gardens, where the Lord Chapulin and his Queen resided with unnumbered relatives and clans-people in the luxury of fresh running springs and a great abundance of fragrant flowers.

In the
Cantares Mexicanos,
the great epic of Nahuatl literature, “grasshopper” is another name for the ghost warrior. I didn't understand the significance of this until later in the summer when the grasshoppers changed their attitude toward me and other humans.

 

Last night as we sat outside on the porch in the dark, Ratty, our archenemy who lives under the aloe patch in the front yard, came out and showed herself to us, almost as if she was greeting us or maybe taunting us—she chews up the wires in the engines of our cars and pulls the stuffing out of the old cushions on the white plastic chairs in the front yard.

Despite the curses we hurled at her when we saw her, Ratty seemed fond of us, and wanted in her way to join us. She sat outside her nest and watched us. The sound of human voices didn't seem to upset her. I started laughing. I told Bill and Robert, “Look. Ratty is sitting with us; she thinks she's our friend. She has no idea she's our enemy.” I felt a fondness for her after that. She already figured out a long time ago that I wasn't going to poison or trap her, only curse at her.

People ask me why not get rid of the big rat nest in my front yard. The piled debris crowns the entire four by six foot aloe patch. If it were simply a rat nest, I might have considered its removal. But Ratty and her clan aren't the only ones that live there. A number of rattlesnakes call the rat tunnels under the aloes home and so do the great desert toads.

I know the ancient people here held the pack rats in high regard; in times of hunger Ratty's pantry kept human beings alive. During droughts and famines, the hungry people used to raid the pack rats' nests for the stores of seeds and jojoba nuts, dried cactus buds and fruits and any baby rats they might find.

Pampered and well fed, we might gag at the thought of sharing Ratty's stores of mesquite and palo verde beans and dried cactus buds. But Allen Ginsberg had a story from a Buddhist monk during the Cultural Revolution in China. He told the story to us in 1984 in China as our delegation of U.S writers invited by the Chinese Writers Association visited Buddhist shrines. The story was about hunger. One of the Buddhist priests told Ginsberg that during the Cultural Revolution, after starving for weeks, he was so hungry that when he saw an undigested leaf of mustard greens in the shit of another priest, he picked the mustard leaf out of the shit, rinsed it off in a stream and ate it.

The huge toad that guards the front doorstep came out from her nest under the porch bricks, and sat awhile with us too. I like to think it is the same big toad I rescued from the cave-in of bricks under the front porch last year.

A
t night before I fall asleep I read as many Emily Dickinson poems as I can. Her poems are full of surprises—their rhyme schemes unpredictable and brilliant as are her uses of the colloquial with the classic. The themes of the poems cover a vast range and are filled with ineffable and mysterious glimpses of transcendence and eternity. How sensuous and joyous this poem is:

Emily Dickinson was famously reclusive, but how else to get the solitude and time to compose more than a thousand poems in one lifetime? She wrote many of her finest poems about bees or flies; her images of the sun and the light, of flowers and birds came to her in her garden. She wrote a wonderful poem about snakes that goes:

Great thick whorled clouds fold over themselves bubbling up rising like silvery yucca soap suds. Veils of white rain soften and smear into pastel blues of towering sky dragons and cloud bears fishing in a fast river of wind.

Giant vertical clouds behind the Black Mountain take on the form of revenant warriors descending to Earth in swirling fog and mist. In the distance a faint rumble of thunder from the southwest, and the huge cloud flattens as it empties a deluge behind the mountains.

As the raindrops begin to fall from the cloud overhead the outline of the cloud begins to lose its edges, feathering into thin air. What lovely blue violet hues on the clouds along the west horizon.

This morning was too dry for rain, and the mist from the clouds evaporated before it reached the ground; it rose and once again became clouds.

Y
esterday, September 6, the dogs in back were barking, so I went out. I found a Gila monster lizard outside the fence, and outside the reach of the mastiffs. Beaded in jet black and coral, the big lizard was breathtaking in his beauty and a blessing to see.

The next day, Chapulin's in-laws and their relatives were all here for a visit in my front yard. Lord Chapulin and his wife must have told them I am a friend.

The grasshoppers prefer the white rain flowers over the pink flowers this summer. The foliage is what they like. They work unseen from the bottom of the stalks in the pot so the rain lily leaves get shorter quite rapidly.

Black—obsidian black, coal black—Chapulin wants another portrait this year. As soon as I complete the manuscript, I will do it.

Lord Chapulin's kinfolk stayed for another day. They didn't touch the four o'clock or jessamine; I don't trust them with the datura. I lifted off any grasshoppers I saw in the daturas; otherwise I won't have any datura flowers this winter. I am a little concerned by the number of Chapulin's entourage.

 

A pale green rain comes with a warm breeze out of the southeast. I hear thunder now, and more raindrops fall. Delicate threads of rain swirl into thick white draperies that fold across the dark hills.

Two thunderstorms this afternoon and evening—thunder and lightning and good but not huge rain. I brought the dogs indoors early tonight because the tarantulas and big toads come out after the rain, and of course rattlesnakes and Gila monster lizards. The dogs can't resist harassing them, and I don't want my dogs to harm them.

 

We haven't seen Godzilla lizard for about two weeks. There are baby lizards in the front yard now, and on the south-facing wall, a baby lizard no longer than my thumbnail. All the good rain we got nearly every afternoon in July and August may mean plenty of roaches and other insects off in the aloe patch or under the greasewood bushes. No need to show oneself to the predators in the front yard if the weeds are full of bugs. However we are beginning to worry that the largest and boldest of the mesquite lizards met an unfortunate end.

Again the following day as we sat out on the front porch, we wondered about the Godzilla lizard and what became of him. Just then I noticed motion in the top of the big mesquite tree and heard the characteristic rapid beak rattle of a roadrunner. Speak of a likely suspect in Godzilla's disappearance—there was Roadrunner, that cuckoo bird, clown and thief, death on snakes, lizards, baby tortoises, baby birds and rodents. Our suspicions grew after Roadrunner's visit.

A clan of roadrunners was already living here when I moved in. They built one of their nests inside the impenetrable arms of a six foot tall cholla cactus with spines so thick and sharp few predators ever try to rob their nests.

 

All the rain this summer brought many sorts of insects. There are a great many very large butterflies this year—mostly shades of gold and bright yellows because the wild flowers late in the summer are mostly hues of yellow or white.

I welcomed Lord Chapulin and his wife last year and invited their return. But the grasshoppers' visit this year gave me quite a surprise.

Chapulin's entourage glutted themselves on the leaves of the white rain lilies and moved into the pink lilies and to the four o'clocks which they don't eat but use for their siestas. The grasshoppers are so gorged they can't fly.

These grasshoppers are sneaky and crafty and quickly take cover when humans come around. Lord Chapulin and his wife were entirely different—so gracious and regal at all times. What a disappointment.

Today the grasshoppers in their wild celebration ate the white rain lilies flat to the dirt in the pot; luckily the lilies don't mind as long as there is plenty of water. I picked the revelers off the white four o'clock plant and the geraniums although they didn't really eat those plants, they merely rested on them.

I didn't take any chances after I'd seen what the black grasshoppers did to the rain lilies so I tossed the hoppers over the fence. I didn't realize one of the mastiffs was on the other side of the fence catching and eating the grasshoppers until that evening when the mastiff threw up a pile of black grasshopper legs and red wings all over the doggy bed.

Early the other morning after a night of an apparent grasshopper fiesta, I saw one big grasshopper eat the thorax of a fallen companion.

I remember that when I first read the web site reports about the black grasshoppers I thought they must be referring to “black grasshoppers” and not my beautiful green Chapulin with rosy magenta wings.

But now that I've had the entourage here for a few weeks, I am beginning to understand. The black grasshoppers, unlike their Lord, are furtive, sly guests. I had no idea Chapulin would have so many followers this year. Still I haven't killed any of the grasshoppers out of regard for Lord Chapulin.

Were the stories about black grasshoppers that I read on the Internet the reason for Lord Chapulin and his wife's sudden departure, and for the other grasshoppers to behave so boorishly? They hadn't done me any harm in the past—because of their majesty and beauty I invited them to eat the rain lilies. But after I'd read the infestation reports on the Internet, each time I saw a black grasshopper I recalled the stories of havoc, instead of seeing their majesty and beauty as I had at first. The negative energy of these stories must have touched Lord Chapulin, and his wife; they must have felt a change in me when I recalled what I'd learned on the Internet. So they did not visit for long. They did not feel I was their friend anymore.