TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

TBO > Life

Tampa gardener turns grasshopper enemies into art

ADVERTISEMENT

By PENNY CARNATHAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 26, 2011

Call it comic relief -- pretty much the only relief for those of us besieged by Eastern lubber grasshoppers.

The armored insects appear by the hordes this time of year, masticating whole landscapes, undeterred by anything but a smart smack with a steel-blade shovel. Their presence can goad the gentlest of nature lovers to red-eyed fury.

Lubbers, meet your comeuppance.

When Norm Smith's done with a grasshopper, it might face the world for all eternity wearing a wig and mini skirt. Or squatting on the john. Norm creates dioramas in which lubbers star – but they'd just die if they could see themselves.

"I try to come up with outrageous themes, something a grasshopper – particularly a lubber – would never be caught doing, like scuba-diving," says the 74-year-old former Sears advertising manager who never retired his creative bug.

"As you change a lubber into a fisherman or a diver or a babe walking a beetle, your perspective changes quite a bit. They're still a vicious, leaf-eating, lousy, tobacco-spitting insect, but for a while, it gives you a different perspective. … You've got to laugh."

If lubbers have taken up residence in your yard, you know them. They hatch in spring throughout Florida, innocent-looking black "Mormon crickets."

Now, the eldest are growing huge, up to 4 inches long, and shedding their baby clothes. They're slipping into the red, yellow and black body armor that makes them look like robot monsters from a 1950s horror movie. Their colors, nature's toxic prey alert, prompt the same "Ewwww!" response from just about every animal on the planet, people to possums.

"I guess I felt sorry for the guys," says Norm, who, by the way, is a very normal-looking guy who lives in a very normal-looking Tampa home with begonias lining the front flowerbed and a wife, Ginger, who has been putting up with this stuff for 51 years come June.

"He's just a very creative person," she says, demurely. "That's his space."

Norm started "lubbering" about 10 years ago – a little something different to entertain the grandkids. Besides the featured creature, his dioramas are made with found things, like driftwood, along with plaster of Paris, paint, cardboard, and a lot of Elmer's Glue. The names say it all: "American Idol" Lubber; Lonely Lubber in the Outhouse; Lubber Computer Nerd; Lubber Wannabe Rembrandt.

Norm doesn't sell them; he crafts for his muse. And for his amusement. Because if there's anything Norm enjoys as much as creating, it's a good chuckle.

"A few friends think I should be put away," he concedes. "But this is very relaxing to me. When I see the end product start coming out, I start laughing. The more you laugh, the better you feel."

He says he never heard of the 2010 film "Dinner for Schmucks," in which comic Steve Carell plays a dupe who creates dioramas (including "The Last Supper") from stuffed dead mice.

And he's not aware of the history of his calling. Yes, there's a history.

In 1851, taxidermist Hermann Ploucquet displayed stuffed animals in humorous poses at the Great Exhibition in London. His tableaux -- "The Duel of the Dormice," "Kittens at Tea – Miss Paulina Singing," "Very Attentive Physician" -- drew such raves, an illustrated book quickly followed. "The Comical Creatures of Wurtenburg" featured engravings of Ploucquet's foxes, weasels and martens in all manner of unlikely situations.

A few years later, perhaps inspired by Ploucquet, English amateur taxidermist Walter Potter began posing costumed kittens, puppies, bunnies and frogs. He dressed them in bridal gowns and tuxedos, put them on Ferris wheels, sat them at desks in classrooms. (He never killed the animals, according to the literature; they all died of natural causes.)

In 1861, he opened Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities and eventually filled it with more than 10,000 dioramas. It was a popular attraction in Sussex through the 1970s, when it was purchased and relocated several times. The collection was broken up and sold at auction in 2003.

Here in the United States, undertaker-turned-shoe store owner James Grosjean also turned heads with stuffed road kill. His turn-of-the-20th-century mechanical dioramas still lurch to creaky life with the flip of a switch at the Allen County Museum in Lima, Ohio.

More recently, funeral home owner Sam Sanfillippo of Madison, Wis., had to close his exhibit of topless dancing chipmunks and albino squirrels playing basketball because public interest started interfering with business. Dead Pals of Sam Sanfillippo, which had been open to the public in the basement of Cress Funeral Home, drew too many fun-loving visitors at inappropriate times, the managing director told RoadsideAmerica.com.

Norm's dioramas differ in that, yes, he kills those lubbers.

"Their demise comes rather quickly," he says. He drops them into a jar of rubbing alcohol, then quickly turns it upside-down so the grasshoppers are gone in seconds.

They soak up the alcohol for two to three months in a jar labeled, "Honest, I won't eat any more leaves!" Then Norm plucks them out to dry for a few days. After that, he says, rethinking the lubber is playtime.

"When you catch a lubber, he's a big gaudy grasshopper. They are, underneath it all, really bad news dudes," he says.

"That part of the lubber is disgusting. This part of the lubber is fun."

Lubber lore

•Some say "lub-bers," others say "loo-bers." Some say Romalea microptera, others say Romalea guttata.

•Amaryllis is the lubber's favorite food, quickly followed by any other bulb plant and, shortly behind that, anything else you're proud of in your garden.

•The lubber's only natural predator, besides gardeners, is the loggerhead shrike, a black-masked little bird that preys on insects, small rodents and other birds. It impales the lubber's carcass on barbed wire or thorns and leaves it to bake in the sun awhile, cooking out the grasshopper's toxins.

•In Central Florida, lubbers usually hatch around March from eggs laid in the ground the previous summer. The little black nymphs have a distinctive yellow, orange or red stripe, but otherwise look like harmless crickets. They're much easier to kill with insecticides while in the nymph stage.

•Through the spring, the nymphs morph through five stages before molting into their dramatically different-looking adult exoskeletons. The adults stick around through the summer and usually are gone by September.

•Once lubbers become adults, the University of Florida recommends killing them by hand-picking and dropping them into soapy water.

One fairly new product that's reporting good results with adults is Nolo Bait, an organic, biological insecticide that targets only grasshoppers. While it may be slow to kill the adults, manufacturer M&R Durango, Inc., of Colorado says it will at least render them impotent, and thus – theoretically – prevent a Class of 2012. It's available locally at Shell's Feed Store, 9513 N. Nebraska Ave., Tampa, and online at www.goodbug.com.

---

pcarnathan@tampatrib.com

(813) 259-7612

ADVERTISEMENT

Coupons and Deals

Games, Puzzles & Trivia

Advergaming and Branded Media