Vernacular prose, childhood memories - grasshoppers

Summer in the countryside is the most fascinating, and after a rainstorm, the fields outside the village are verdant and turquoise. The scorching sun with its scorching steam swirled, rose, and flickered.

Walking into this scenery, you will definitely not feel lonely, but a lively world with you.

The cries of the know are becoming more and more intense; the colorful butterflies are flying everywhere; the buzzing bees are flying around in various flower buds; the larks sing among the blue sky and white clouds, gentle and melodious; and the most attractive thing to you is the call of the grasshoppers, which are crisp, loud and pleasant, and will drive you to catch a few to take home and enjoy this beautiful music for a long time.

Just at this moment, on the boundless field, you will suddenly find a few bare-assed rural dolls, appearing convexly on the field. They may have just come from a clear river, or they may have played enough water games in a ditch and walked toward the field. At this point, they began to agree on a grasshopper catching game again.

I was among the bunch of bare-chested dolls (during the production team, rural boys under the age of ten, and the hot summers were almost all spent bare-buttocks). In the summer, our rural children's favorite thing to do is to catch grasshoppers, and it is regular.

No, five of our playmates who were born in the same year with the production team, after playing enough hide-and-seek games in the river, ran to the field to start our grasshopper catching game, despite the heat of the sun. Of course, we have prepared the cage of grasshoppers in advance. The cage was made by the fathers from the straw (the slender part of the upper end of the high grain festival), which is strong and delicate.

We scattered, each looking for the target to capture. I walked to the edge of a bean field and immediately heard a grasshopper calling, and the sound was very good. So I calmed down and looked for prestige, and sure enough, I found an emerald green grasshopper lying on the leaf at the top of a lush bean, fluttering two short transparent wings, making a cheerful and loud sound. The grasshopper was large, with two long tentacles on its rectangular head, next to which were two shiny black compound eyes, and two sharp black teeth in its lower mouth. The grasshopper has six legs, the first four legs are slender and short, and the hind legs are long and strong, in an inverted V-shape. Its role is that when it encounters danger, its hind legs can jump more than a meter away with one step, and then quickly hide. The grasshopper's belly is very large, like the belly of a man who is willing to drink beer, and like the belly of a great general. While cutting, the grasshopper's belly is layered, like a terraced field on a mountain.

I crept closer to the grasshopper from its back, closer, closer, closer, silently. It didn't notice me, still "squeak, squeak, squeak." Just when I was less than a meter away from it, it seemed to sense danger, "squeaked", suddenly turned around, saw me "squeak" a sound of raising its head and front paws, opened its mouth and teeth to demonstrate to me, and stepped back to try to escape. Saying that it was too late, I also quickly put it in the palm of my hand and successfully caught the grasshopper. So I happily announced my results to my partners. And among them, two also caught grasshoppers. The other two partners waved their hands at us and motioned for us not to speak.

We continued to look for the next target, and this time I walked into the sweet potato field. The grasshoppers in the sweet potato field are easier to catch than the grasshoppers in the bean fields, because the sweet potatoes have short leaves and stems, and the grasshoppers are easy to find even if they escape. However, there are not as many grasshoppers in sweet potato fields as there are in bean fields. But when I walked into the sweet potato field for a few minutes, I found a grasshopper, which was also lying on the sweet potato leaves and chirping. This grasshopper is mainly black, with red, green and white, which are very harmonious with each other, and there is a feeling that the thickness and light are always appropriate. In the same way, I approached it carefully at first, and when I was still two or three meters away from the grasshopper, I rushed forward quickly, and although the grasshopper heard the noise and quickly jumped off the leaf surface to escape, I had rushed to it, and it could not escape my sight. I bent down and covered it, it had jumped away, covered it again, it dodged again, and after many battles, it finally caught it.

After catching this one, I quietly listened to the sound of grasshoppers in other directions. Hey, not far from the peanut field there is the song of grasshoppers again. As I slowly approached, I found an extremely rare red grasshopper, and the red grasshopper was the best of the grasshoppers! This discovery made my little heart pound with excitement. I thought, no matter what, I'm going to catch it. Without any suspense, I caught it without much effort.

After more than an hour of hard work, we have gained a lot. I caught six grasshoppers, in third place. The first caught ten and the second caught nine. My biggest gain was catching a red grasshopper, which made my friends admire. I also proudly walked home with my head held high.

Back at home, my mother saw my tanned and shiny body, she took me in her arms, and said painfully: "Silly child, look at the sunburn, you are not afraid of heat, why catch so many grasshoppers?" Two or three can be enough, and more cannot be fed. "Receiving my mother's love, my heart flowed through a warm current of happiness, and I held my head high to my mother and said, "Mother, I caught a red grasshopper." The mother looked at the red grasshopper and praised me in surprise: "Or my child can, the red grasshopper is good!" He also suggested, "Just keep three grasshoppers, throw away three, right?" "I followed my mother's advice and took out three of the four green grasshoppers and strangled them to death. Don't blame me for being cruel, because at that time we all thought that grasshoppers were pests, and we didn't know until we grew up that grasshoppers were beneficial insects. It rarely eats crop leaves, and their food is mainly pests, such as various pests on beans, as well as corn borers, locusts, flies and other pests.

I think there are the most grasshoppers in the bean field, and I think the grasshoppers like to eat bean leaves. So, at first I fed it with bean leaves, but when the bean leaves were dry, I didn't see how much the grasshoppers ate. Later, I gave it vegetable leaves to eat, and only then did I see that they ate vigorously. Once, however, I occasionally put a small grasshopper into a grasshopper cage, and I didn't expect them to scramble to eat it. So as if I had discovered a new continent, I began to catch small grasshoppers in the grass on the side of the road and eat them. They like it more than anything else.

Grasshoppers are omnivorous insects that our rural children do not understand. The food we feed the grasshoppers is monotonous, and the time to feed the grasshoppers is not long. We also like to feed grasshopper peppers, because we heard adults say that grasshoppers like to call when they eat peppers, and in order to make the grasshoppers sing more, they often feed grasshopper peppers.

When I was a child, I had to raise grasshoppers several times a year, because grasshoppers would die without knowing why. The longest time I raised grasshoppers was more than ten days after the winter. Listen to my mother, someone can raise grasshoppers through the winter to the spring of the next year! I was so dedicated, but I didn't do it.

The singing grasshopper is male, while the female grasshopper does not bark, but it can eat. Therefore, our childhood is more about catching female grasshoppers. In the countryside, in that era, it was the first delicacy for children. I feel the same way, especially the eggs of female grasshoppers, which are fragrant and nutritious, and are the best food for our rural children to supplement protein.

As long as I can remember, every summer and autumn, when my mother came back from farm work, she would take out many small insects of grasshoppers and grasshoppers from her pocket and give them to us, so that we could burn them in the bottom of the pot and eat them. Sometimes, many times, my mother would put it in the pan and fry it in oil for us to eat.

However, one day, my mother was severely reprimanded by the production team for helping me catch grasshoppers and delaying the working time of the production team, and my mother was punished for half a day's work. This casts a shadow on my heart.

It was an autumn break, and my mother sharpened two scythes for cutting beans and prepared to go down to the field to cut beans for the production team. At this time I asked my mother to take me, and I said that I would catch the grasshoppers myself. My mother took me without saying a word. Because I often caught the grasshoppers myself, when I got to the field, the production captain began to assign the task of cutting beans. My mother was assigned to a separate field to cut beans, which was about half an acre. The captain said: Today's tasks must be completed before the work is released, otherwise the work points will not be given.

During the production team period, the members of the company all earned work to eat. Grain, cotton, and oil are distributed according to the amount of work of each family. So the work is very important, in fact, the work is money. At that time, the captain of the production team was very authoritative, and he could even scold the members. Our captain is a particularly fierce captain. The members of the society were not afraid of him, and our children saw him like a mouse and a cat, hiding far away. When I was assigned tasks by the captain, I hid in the far ditch with the appearance of pig grass. When the captain was gone and my mother began to cut beans, I ran to my mother and prepared to catch grasshoppers.

When cutting beans, there are especially many female grasshoppers in the bean fields. My mother cut every 20 ridges, and each trip could catch more than a dozen grasshoppers. I threaded the grasshoppers I caught in strings with prepared needles and threads and put them in a small bamboo basket.

In the evening, my mother cut the last bean to a few meters away, and a miracle occurred (for me), when dozens of female grasshoppers appeared in the bean trees, jumping around. I was ecstatic, and my hands kept covering the grasshoppers, but where did I cover them? Besides, every time you catch one, you have to wear it with needle and thread. Sometimes it was bitten by the grasshopper, and even a lot of blood was shed. My mother would use the red grass leaves to help me rub the wound, and she would say in her mouth: "Red earth, you drink blood, you can't beat your father", so that you can stop the bleeding from flowing. At this time, the grasshopper will jump around and run around, and it is very easy to disappear. In order to reduce the chances of the grasshoppers escaping, my mother also put down her scythe to help me catch the grasshoppers. As long as my hands don't bleed, I'll continue to catch grasshoppers.

Just as my mother and I were catching grasshoppers on our heads, we overheard a loud roar: "What do you do in the X family (for married women, the habits left by feudal society)?" You don't cut beans! ”。 The mother looked up and saw that the captain was already standing in front of her. The mother's face turned red with shame, and she hurried to cut the last small piece of beans. And I was so frightened that I stood where I was and didn't dare to move, and I knew that my face must be sallow. But the captain did not spare, he saw the grasshopper in my basket, kicked it far away, and shouted: "X family, you don't cut beans, go catch grasshoppers, this is lazy behavior, you don't give your afternoon work." The mother heard this and raised her head, looked at the captain with rosy eyes and said, "Captain, I will finish cutting!" Why are work points deducted? The captain was fierce: "Catch grasshoppers during work, you are taking the time of the group to do private work, you should be punished." My mother still wanted to say something, but the captain had already raised his hands and yelled, "Say it again, say it again, and I'll hit you." "The captain is the big surname of our production team, our family is a family with foreign surnames, the mother is thin, where dare to resist, can only tearfully bow her head and cut beans." In fact, during the production team period, laziness during work was a common thing. As long as they do not work separately, the captain is not there, the laff, the smoker, the sole of the shoe, the sweater and so on are lazy. alas! There are always unfair things.

I was still standing where I was, not daring to cry, not daring to speak. After my mother finished cutting the remaining beans, she still had tears in her eyes and came to me and took my hand and said, "Don't be afraid, child, let's go home!" She picked up the basket and grasshoppers that the captain had kicked off, and I followed my mother home without a sound. However, when I returned home, my father heard that my mother had been deducted from her work, and he scolded my mother again in anger, and dumped all the grasshoppers I caught into the cesspool. While cooking a meal for a family of seven, my mother shed tears and did not dare to talk back to my father. At that time, the feudal patriarchy was quite serious.

After this incident, I lost the idea of eating grasshoppers, and really, I haven't eaten grasshoppers since then, although it's delicious and delicious.

Childhood memories are more carefree and innocent and lively. However, the fierce appearance of the production captain and the paternalism of his father also left a deep shadow on me. I loved my childhood!