Landing zone

Today as I was leaving my friend's house, a giant flying insect zoomed past me. Just as I thought to myself, "Whoa where did that come from... That was close--" it made a mid-air U-turn and started to come straight at me. I stepped a little to the left so it would avoid slamming into me, but it also veered a little to my left and landed on my leg. It deliberately changed its path because it had already targeted me as a landing zone.

In the next few moments, I realized that the giant flying insect was, in fact, not Gregor Samsa, but was a spotted grasshopper of some sort. As expected, I began to panic a bit and did the oh-my-God-I'm-a-girl-and-I'm-grossed-out-so-I'm-going-to-flail-about thing for about 15 seconds. With any insect of common proportions, these erratic movements would have frightened it halfway to the other side of town. But because of its monstrous size, it stayed put. It clearly had no intention of leaving. And you can only panic for so long.

After about half a minute you get your head together and begin brainstorming solutions. And so I attempted to negotiate with it. There I stood, on the sidewalk of a very busy street in Pasadena, and begged and pleaded with a giant grasshopper. It seemed to get the message.

It looked up at me with its big bug-eyes and pushed off of my leg with all of its weight like a swimmer beginning his laps.