Ever see Hidalgo?

Or any of those movies that showed a swarm of locust? Well... I ran into one yesterday. Ummm, make that 'walked' into one.

On my daily walk along the canal banks I looked down and the ground was moving. My eyesight is bad these days so I just figured it was my eyes.... but then...

I began to focus and noticed it was little black specks flittering about... all of them moving forward, ahead of me... or trying to anyway, they weren't fast enough. I had to stop and check it out. Crickets... looked like baby crickets or else a species of cricket I wasn't familiar with and much smaller than the crickets I knew of.

How many of them? Lots, that's how many.... thousands in view and for the length of my entire walk... about 5 miles. IT was not possible to walk and not crush several with every step.

They were hopping but not that high... maybe a foot? In all my years of running/walking that route I had never seen that before. Here's my theory - -

It was 'hatch' day... I had timed it perfectly... or horribly depending on your point of view. I'll be headed out for my walk late this afternoon and it will be interesting to see if they're still around. If I think of it I'll take a video because I'm not exaggerating here.... thousands upon thousands almost covering the ground like a carpet. - JamesJM