Playing tag with a grasshopper, photo for sale.

Have you ever played tag with a grasshopper? Other than the kind, where you are catching them for fishing, that is?

I wanted to get a photo of this grasshopper on his flower stem, so his back showed up. Every time I moved round the flower stem, so did he! I laid flat on the grass to get this picture, so it was a process to keep moving round and round, keeping the camera at ready for the perfect shot as I went.

Finally, I got tired of chasing him and stopped to take a break. As I watched the hopper through my lens, he suddenly moved his head sideways, to see what I was doing. Right at that moment, I snapped my photo! I like this photo way better than would have liked the photo I was trying to capture.

You can see his little beady eye looking straight at me, and I think it's so cute he would have peeked out like this. For one thing, you don't think of a hopper as having that many brains....so I was surprised to learn he was a "thinking" "humorous" grasshopper. He was playing games with me!

Naturally, a grasshopper has a stiff body. So when he moved his head to peek at me, his tail moved to the other side of the stem every so slightly. Out of all the photos I've taken, this is one of my very favorites.

I never tire of the delightful things little critters do.
Donna Ridgway