Grasshopper Dances

Chewing green leaves, grasshoppers perched on every plant. The fields and roadsides were like too-crowded grasshopper cities.

All around us grasshoppers jumped into the air, fluttered their bright yellow and black wings, and made crackling noises. Like crazy Ping-pong balls not caring where they went, sometimes they smacked into my legs, and the bottom of Red Dog's belly.

"Oof!" Red Dog grunted when that happened. Then he'd snap at those grasshoppers as if they were horseflies trying to bite.

That afternoon I carried in my shirt pocket a small radio. As hot afternoon wind blew through tall corn in the fields around us, the music played and like brown popcorn popping out of the earth grasshoppers sprang all around us. Sometimes, when the music was prettiest and fluttering, crackling grasshoppers swirled around us like autumn leaves, Red Dog lept into the air, grunted and snapped and I... I found myself dancing.

Ah, that day the whole world wanted to dance!