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Red-Legged Grasshopper - Melanoplus femurrubrum

What a fine sight. We actually first saw one of the individuals featured in these images earlier during the highlights of 2023. That's quite a long time to wait for an official showcase, but here they are to behold! The humble and athletic Grasshopper gazing out upon a front yard at two points in time: the edge of summer (female) and the beginnings of autumn (male). It's clear to tell when images belong to which season given how the leaves' colors have changed over just a few weeks. Nevertheless, it wasn't time just yet to pull the stalks (the roots are left behind which grow new milkweed next year) as there were a few seed pods that needed to open and let loose the many tufted seeds into the air, but I digress. While this specie will perch on these leaves to look upon their changing world and enjoy the warm sun (for a metabolic boost), a Red-Legged Grasshopper will not sample a bite. Consuming a milkweed leaf containing toxic sap would prove to be fatal, or debilitating at the very least. Despite a seasonal shift, there are still plenty of herbaceous plants and grasses to chew up.

More pressingly, there needs to be suitable soil for the female Red-Legged Grasshoppers to place eggs in, for it is the eggs are the ones who will overwinter thanks to earth covering them to insulate them from the cold. The green/brown nymphs appear in my area from mid-July through August, and it doesn't take much grazing to gradually metamorphose into the adult form seen in these pictures. On the subject of molting: while it was foremost important to give this "2023 Highlight" the spotlight it deserves and give some appreciation for this well-known green insect, identifying this insect in its nymph instars can be tricky. Ever since I found that Two-Striped Grasshopper in the front yard, reasons to second guess which nymphs were which increased! At they diverge in appearance when they arrive at adulthood; compared to the Two-Striped Grasshopper (M. bivittatus), the Red-Legged Grasshopper tends to be smaller and doesn't feature two yellowish stripes running along its back from eye to wingtip. Pictures 2 and 9 showcase this lack of stripe clearly. The Red-Legged specie may seem relatively plain, but there's a lot to admire about them when you can get a close-up, or more accurately, if you can get a close up. Look at the hindlegs of Pictures 1 and 10: they are locked and ready to thrust him onto the lawn.

Pictures were taken on September 13 and October 1, 2023 with a Google Pixel 4. For confirmation: the summer Grasshopper is a female as shown by the tip of her abdomen (it tapers to a clasping point); the autumnal Grasshopper is a male as his abdomen is wide, bulbous and curves upward at the tip. Mystery solved!

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All time

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She should show up at events where Prince Charles is. Give him a scare 💅 Watch to the end for the result!

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still amazes me that by season 45 or whatever, Supernatural was being exclusively watched by delusionally hopeful women with flamingo-salinity tolerance for bad writing and the creators still couldn’t pander to them because maybe there was 1 straight guy out there still accidentally watching it

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via pupalupapigeons on instagram

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heres a video of Carrot going hog wild on her veggies

LOV 2 MONCH

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together forever :)

what if we were little bugs holding hands encased in amber forever and ever :))))

prints available here :p

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Trump is appointing three washed-up actors as "ambassador to Hollywood" in order to bring back the "Golden Age of Hollywood". Which has historical precedent: there was an ambassador to Hollywood in the Golden Age, too. His name was Georg Gyssling and he was sent by Hitler to monitor the activities of Hollywood studios. To make sure their films didn't say anything anti-Nazi, resulting in many attempts at anti-fascist films being shut down by the Hays Code. Just a fun historical Hollywood fact there

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I want to thank my laggy computer for this glitch:

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the picture of dorian gray (1890) - oscar wilde

"fuck my yaoi life"

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a rogue pipe cleaner.... escaped from the craft supplies

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Join me on my journey to finally unbalance my hormones, toxify my body, boost my inflammation, maximize my cortisol and absolutely destroy my gut health.

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I’m really enchanted by fish. I have an entire file dedicated to fish I think are very beautiful.

Very charming creatures.